RAID arrays -> is the system universal?

Heofz · 29 Apr 2006 at 16:42

I was wondering this:

I have 2 drives in RAID 0, using Si3114 raid controller.

Is a RAID system so basic such that I could just plug these hard drives in a different raid controller, configure it to have have RAID 0 with the same cluster sizes and it would instantly work?

tomos · 29 Apr 2006 at 20:51

doubtful. i've heard that it wont work like this.

i tried this after RMAing a motherboard. the array didnt get picked up at all

someone else i know did this ok.

think it depends on your karma levels tbh

Heofz · 29 Apr 2006 at 21:29

lol

would anyone else happen to know at all?

johnnyboy32 · 2 May 2006 at 08:12

I had two seagate 80Gb barracuda SATA drives in raid 0 on an Asus A7n8x deluxe (can't remember the raid controller but i don't think it was Sil3114 - look it up if you have to). I had 2 partitions on the array 40Gb for OS and 120Gb for data. Unfortunatley I had a catastrophic failure ( my power supply blew up) which, after much buggering about trying to save data on the array, led to a complete upgrade. My new motherboard has Sil3114 and I plugged the two drives into it. Good news - I could access all the data on the large partiton, Bad news - OS partition was unreadable. Therefore, I believe you should be able to move your array from on controller to another (taking note which disk is disk 0 and which is disk 1 when you disconnect, obviously). As far as I'm aware (I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm not) The array data is written to the MBR of the disk so a different controller should be able to pick it up.
Hope this helps.

Heofz · 2 May 2006 at 09:59

johnnyboy32 said:
far as I'm aware (I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm not) The array data is written to the MBR of the disk so a different controller should be able to pick it up.
Hope this helps.

thanks mate, tis what I needed to hear

rudeboymcc · 2 May 2006 at 15:32

can anyone else confirm this works? I have an Asus K8Vse which ahs via and promise sata controllers, and all i want to do is move it from promise to via.

At first i thought of only attaching one hard disk to the via, then setup up raid(mirror), check everything works and then connect the other hard disk and tel it to write all *** data to it. that way if the raid thing deletes my data I'll have it al on the hard disk not connected.

is it safe to not do what i'm thinking?

Datamonkey · 2 May 2006 at 15:49

Does not work,

Have tried using intel and via before and the drives were not seen until i recreated the raid, which destroys your data in the process.

Back up and start from scratch fella is the only option.

rudeboymcc · 2 May 2006 at 16:01

well in that case say if my motherboard was to break for whatever reason, there's no way I can retrieve my data? I'd understand if you were talking about raid stripping (i think that's what it's caled, when two hard disks look like one), but mine are setup as a mirror, so each hard disk has all the data independantly. surely if i take one out now, the otehr will still work fine as I've just emulated a hard disk failure?

Soul Rider · 2 May 2006 at 17:49

Just use acronis true image and make an image of the data, then if it goes, you haven't lost your data.

Soul Rider · 2 May 2006 at 17:50

rudeboymcc said:
well in that case say if my motherboard was to break for whatever reason, there's no way I can retrieve my data? I'd understand if you were talking about raid stripping (i think that's what it's caled, when two hard disks look like one), but mine are setup as a mirror, so each hard disk has all the data independantly. surely if i take one out now, the otehr will still work fine as I've just emulated a hard disk failure?

If you have raid1 - Mirror, then you have redundancy, only 1 drive has the used data on it, the other is a mirror image. If one drive goes down, you use the other drive in its place, no problems.

Heofz · 2 May 2006 at 18:17

Datamonkey said:
i recreated the raid, which destroys your data in the process.

are you sure about that? If that were so, how come whenever I configured 2 drives to be in a raid array the raid management utility thinggy sets the array up instantaneously?

Surely if it actually modifies the drives there would be at least some sort of delay and some noise would come from the hard drives themselves?

rudeboymcc · 2 May 2006 at 18:25

if i had a spare 250gig drive i'd back it up but i don't and it' s about 60 dvd-rs, i better get buring

what I was thinking is to take out one of my raid1 hard disks and try and plug it in to the other controller. If it works it means that all the data on that disk is accessible. So after the first drive is setup, all i'd need to do is plug in the second drive, adn turn raid on, telling it to copy everything from one driv to the other, effectively moving the raid to another controller. I would move the whole raid setup in one go but i don't want to risk it.

Soul Rider · 2 May 2006 at 18:59

Heofz said:
are you sure about that? If that were so, how come whenever I configured 2 drives to be in a raid array the raid management utility thinggy sets the array up instantaneously?

Surely if it actually modifies the drives there would be at least some sort of delay and some noise would come from the hard drives themselves?

Creating the array does not write to the disks, writing the logical partitions does - and this is what wipes the disks.

When you create an array, it just recognises the disks and the sizes you specify, but to actually use the drives, you need to create logical partition, and this writes over the data.

My Raid controller on my server (SCSI Admittedly) has an auto detect feature. If I unplug any of my drives and move them to another location it can redetect the positioning of the drives, without losing the array, but it can't read other RAID configured drives if i add them. I have to initialise them to the controller, and the data gets lost, but then it is a very old controller, and SCSI, so things may be different...

ChrisLX200 · 4 May 2006 at 11:24

Only time I did this was when the Promise RAID controller died on my Asus P4B motherboard. Had a 2-drive RAID 0 array at the time. I bought a PCI card Promise TX2000 RAID controller and plugged the drives into that (in the correct order!). Re-created the array simply by choosing the drives. It worked OK and I recovered the data.

This only works if the drivers are the same, and the drives are in the same sequence, and the cluster sizes and other logical parameters are not changed. Moving from one make to another (e.g., Promise to SI) will not work.

rudeboymcc · 4 May 2006 at 12:31

seems to me that Raid isn't as secure as i thought. that means that if anything goes wrong with the controller or motherboard, (which could easily happen) then you've lost your data unless you go out and buy a similar motherboard with the same brand raid controller.

Think i'm gonna take my raid setup apart and have the two disks runnign seperately but sync them everynow and again. Bit messy but it means i can't loose my data as easily!

ChrisLX200 · 4 May 2006 at 13:03

It's worse than you think. If the array goes offline (as it usually does if there's a problem with it) then few recovery tools will even see it because said tools have to work *through* the RAID driver. You have to get it back online to have a hope of getting your data back.

A trick with Promise RAID arrays is to delete and immediately re-create the array without changing any settings. It's nerve wracking to delete the array, but that action does not actually do anything to the data part of the disk. Re-creating the array will write to the drive boot sectors information about how the array is setup, and that can get you going again.