Change RAID-controller, will information remain on drives?

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Fillzter
Why would anyone make a system this unsecure?

that is what raid 0 is...and why it is not really recommended for important data that you need.

 

[bob4432]

here is a question - if the op had used raid 1 and the controller dies, how does the situation go? can you just plug the hdds into any normal controller, does it have to be a raid controller or just a normal sata/pata port? does the the raid controller do anything special with the data in a raid 1 setup?

 

[BigCoolJesus]

Originally posted by: bob4432
here is a question - if the op had used raid 1 and the controller dies, how does the situation go? can you just plug the hdds into any normal controller, does it have to be a raid controller or just a normal sata/pata port? does the the raid controller do anything special with the data in a raid 1 setup?

if its raid 1 you just take either of the drives and plug them into a sata port, and it will work (raid 1 is basically the same as having two seperate drives with the same exact contents, meaning you only need one to actually run the system thats installed on it, or in this case retrieve files)

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: BigCoolJesus

Originally posted by: bob4432
here is a question - if the op had used raid 1 and the controller dies, how does the situation go? can you just plug the hdds into any normal controller, does it have to be a raid controller or just a normal sata/pata port? does the the raid controller do anything special with the data in a raid 1 setup?

if its raid 1 you just take either of the drives and plug them into a sata port, and it will work (raid 1 is basically the same as having two seperate drives with the same exact contents, meaning you only need one to actually run the system thats installed on it, or in this case retrieve files)

so you would not need a raid controller at all to get the data if a raid 1 m/b / controller died, just verifying

 

[BigCoolJesus]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: BigCoolJesus

Originally posted by: bob4432
here is a question - if the op had used raid 1 and the controller dies, how does the situation go? can you just plug the hdds into any normal controller, does it have to be a raid controller or just a normal sata/pata port? does the the raid controller do anything special with the data in a raid 1 setup?

if its raid 1 you just take either of the drives and plug them into a sata port, and it will work (raid 1 is basically the same as having two seperate drives with the same exact contents, meaning you only need one to actually run the system thats installed on it, or in this case retrieve files)

so you would not need a raid controller at all to get the data if a raid 1 m/b / controller died, just verifying

no, you can just treat it like a regular hard drive

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: BigCoolJesus

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: BigCoolJesus

Originally posted by: bob4432
here is a question - if the op had used raid 1 and the controller dies, how does the situation go? can you just plug the hdds into any normal controller, does it have to be a raid controller or just a normal sata/pata port? does the the raid controller do anything special with the data in a raid 1 setup?

if its raid 1 you just take either of the drives and plug them into a sata port, and it will work (raid 1 is basically the same as having two seperate drives with the same exact contents, meaning you only need one to actually run the system thats installed on it, or in this case retrieve files)

so you would not need a raid controller at all to get the data if a raid 1 m/b / controller died, just verifying

no, you can just treat it like a regular hard drive

thanks, but sorry to the op

 

[TerryMathews]

This is why I always recommend that people who are going to use RAID on important systems, use off-board RAID controllers from vendors who make them for a living (3ware,Promise). For instance, if you were using a Promse FastTrak FT66 and you burnt up the controller, you could replace it with a FastTrak TX4000 and it would just work. SuperTrak understands FastTrak format also. I know 3ware does the same kind of stuff, but I only use Promise so I'm not that familiar with it.

It's a difficult, expensive, but wholly valuable lesson.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: TerryMathews
This is why I always recommend that people who are going to use RAID on important systems, use off-board RAID controllers from vendors who make them for a living (3ware,Promise). For instance, if you were using a Promse FastTrak FT66 and you burnt up the controller, you could replace it with a FastTrak TX4000 and it would just work. SuperTrak understands FastTrak format also. I know 3ware does the same kind of stuff, but I only use Promise so I'm not that familiar with it.

It's a difficult, expensive, but wholly valuable lesson.

QFT... Especially since that controller will migrate to another mobo with hds intact.
Tas.

 

[Fillzter]

Ah, I knew it could be done! I will try this first, then if that doesn't work, I'll try my friend's computer (exactly the same as mine).

 

[TerryMathews]

Originally posted by: Fillzter
Ah, I knew it could be done! I will try this first, then if that doesn't work, I'll try my friend's computer (exactly the same as mine).

Make no mistake, depending on your controller, it may not be doable. Some controllers are hard-coded to format an array upon creation.

Promise (and 3ware) controllers have more options, but you pay more for them. They aren't exactly consumer-level RAID (but, OTOH, nor are they industrial-strength).

 

[Vegito]

works for scsi... i pull drives off compaq servers and used it on my lsi controller..

i wouldn't try for ide.. ghost and restore as said..

 

[Fillzter]

YES!! The program worked! I'm recovering the first drive now as we speak. All my photos are on the way to my new samsung spinpoint 200GB I bought today.

Oh my god. I can live with computer equipment burning up, but loosing this kind of data would just be too much. Loosing things you can't buy with money is the worst.

Lansalot, you saved me!

Thanks all for discussing and giving advice. God bless you all!

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Fillzter
YES!! The program worked! I'm recovering the first drive now as we speak. All my photos are on the way to my new samsung spinpoint 200GB I bought today.

Oh my god. I can live with computer equipment burning up, but loosing this kind of data would just be too much. Loosing things you can't buy with money is the worst.

Lansalot, you saved me!

Thanks all for discussing and giving advice. God bless you all!

now buy a second hdd and put it in your machine in a non raid setup and use ghost or acronis true image and have it clone your main drive every week or so!!!! man, you got a lot luckier than most...

 

[Varun]

Originally posted by: bob4432

Originally posted by: Fillzter
YES!! The program worked! I'm recovering the first drive now as we speak. All my photos are on the way to my new samsung spinpoint 200GB I bought today.

Oh my god. I can live with computer equipment burning up, but loosing this kind of data would just be too much. Loosing things you can't buy with money is the worst.

Lansalot, you saved me!

Thanks all for discussing and giving advice. God bless you all!

no buy a second hdd and put it in your machine in a non raid setup and use ghost or acronis true image and have it clone your main drive every week or so!!!! man, you got a lot luckier than most...

Or just make DVD backups of important data often.

 

[Fillzter]

Yes, I sure got lucky! I lost a lot of data, but the most important (my photo album) recovered 100% intact.

I bought two DVDs so that I could make copies of all the photos.

I don't think I'm gonna use RAID-0 again. I hardly see any difference of my RAID-0 setup and running one of those drives (WD Raptor 10k) solo.

From the bright side, I just got bumped up 200 GBs.

 

[mad38dog]

I run twin hitachi 80gb sata in a raid 0 config. but I also have a 120gb ide drive to store all my important stuff in just in case.

The raid 0 setup is just for the fun of it, but I always make sure I put all my sensitive stuff on my ide drive

 

[wolfpack15]

Originally posted by: Fillzter
So, let's say you own a motherboard and decide to reset the bios (replace the system battery, for example), then you also loose all data on the harddrives?

You shouldn't lose data on your hard drive this way. In past two weeks, I have resetted my BIOS (removing battery and etc.) like million times (stupid motherboard problems). All this time, I have had two Seagates in RAID 0 connected to nForce 4 controller. Even after resetting it like million times, I haven't lost a single byte of data from that RAID hard drives.

 

[glugglug]

NVRaid lets you select drives for an array in the BIOS without clearing the drive partition data. If you specify the same stripe size when picking drives for the new array it *might* work. Probably will just fail to make sense of the array when it tries to boot though. :-(

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: wolfpack15

Originally posted by: Fillzter
So, let's say you own a motherboard and decide to reset the bios (replace the system battery, for example), then you also loose all data on the harddrives?

You shouldn't lose data on your hard drive this way. In past two weeks, I have resetted my BIOS (removing battery and etc.) like million times (stupid motherboard problems). All this time, I have had two Seagates in RAID 0 connected to nForce 4 controller. Even after resetting it like million times, I haven't lost a single byte of data from that RAID hard drives.

1 million times, damn do you now have carpel tunnel syndrome? jk, welcome to the forurms

 

[Ronin]

This is why you don't store "data you can't lose" on a stripe set without doing occassional backups.

As was said before, if the old board and the new one share the same RAID controllers (I believe the Sil on both is the same, but I could be wrong), you'll be fine. When you install the RAID drivers after installing the OS, Disk Manager will show a foreign drive for your stripe set. If you import that, you'll have your data back. Whatever you do, do NOT initialize the RAID in the RAID setup. You will lose your data.