MB likely fried: How to save RAID 0? Possible?

[Matt_Stevens]

My Shuttle XPC has sh*t the bed. I do believe the mb has died on me and that is a problem because my D drive consisted of two WD 1TB Velociraptors in a striped RAID. And because I had been so busy I had failed to back up a folder with some graphics I had been working on. Whoops.

Now a year ago I moved a RAID 1 from one PC into another and expected the drives to be wiped while creating the RAID (I had backed all the data up, naturally). Well low and behold I created the RAID 1 with those drives in the new PC and when I booted into windows the drives were still in tact. No data lost. No drives wiped. RAID 1 functioning! Perhaps Intel Rapid Storage Technology being on both MB's had something to do with that?

Can the same thing happen with a RAID 0? A striped raid is far more complicated than a mirror.

So I am buying another Shuttle. The exact same one, a SZ77R5. That way I can simply move over everything from the old one to the new and will make sure it is put together exactly the same way (before doing that I will test the Shuttle out with a separate hdd).

I am asking advice on how to deal with this and what might happen.

Thanks.

 

[Essence_of_War]

If the drives are still OK, and it's the exact same motherboard chipset, then it's possible that a fake-raid-0 will be recoverable.

I wouldn't bet money or important work on it, though. If this is work related, I'd contact a data recovery specialist, explain what happened to them, and see what they recommend.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

I'm 99.9% sure the drives are fine and that it's a MB issue. The replacement shuttle is the exact same one. Same MB. Same everything. I just wonder when I go into the bios and set the drives for raid zero will they wipe the drives out? Erase them? Don't know.

As I mentioned before, I did not lose my raid 1 data when going from one MB to another different MB about a year ago. That's a mirror raid. I know striped is more complicated. Perhaps the bios will erase the drives when creating a raid zero.

 

[CorsairDemon]

If the machine is identical, and the BIOS and RAID options are set properly, the drives will plug and play.

Each drive is marked as part of a specific raid array. No data will be lost if you are simply just transferring drives from one machine to another. As long as RAID is set in the BIOS and the drives are plugged in.

Hell, you can even put the drives in another computer (assuming that computers raid controller is on and has another drive with windows on it) and recover that way.

RAID drivers only matter for booting. Once the drives are marked, you're can put in em any raid enabled machine and use it.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

Thank you! I was not aware of this. So if I understand you correctly I can remove the two drives in my main system that are a striped D drive (two Samsung Spinpoints) and replace them with the Striped drives from my Shuttle and get back to work.

 

[mv2devnull]

Each drive is marked as part of a specific raid array.

That is the array metadata. Every RAID "controller" (hard, fake, and soft) uses that.

The trouble is that controllers from different vendors and even different versions from
same vendor can use different metadata format. Even write to different part of the drive.

I had once drive(s) on NVidia controller, moved them to SLI controller and recreated arrays.
The latter write did not overwrite the earlier metadata and thus I had two different
metadata on same drives.

Anyway, if the controller is different, then it may not understand the metadata
on the disks and thus fails to see the existing array.


Changing a RAID controller in BIOS/UEFI between "IDE", "AHCI" and "RAID" modes does not write to drives.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

Hmmm... I suppose the safest course of action is to wait for the bare bones Shuttle XPC replacement, test it out (I have a spare HDD and RAM) to be sure it's good, then go ahead and get into the BIOS, make sure it is set to RAID and install the HDD's from the prior setup. It should then act exactly like it as before from what you gents are telling me.

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

Hey there,

I'd support what the guys suggested. It really depends on if the controller of the motherboard and the BIOS are the same. There's a chance that you can reuse your RAID (regardless of its type) on a different motherboard but you'd need the same chipset with the same BIOS and RAID settings.

My suggestion is to turn to a data recovery company if you truly value your data and need it 100% intact. Any attempt to recover data from a RAID array or a failing drive may further damage or corrupt the data and lower the chances of recovering it.

Captain_WD.

 

[Matt_Stevens]

The Shuttle XPC barebones came in, I performed a transplant and now I am back up and running as if nothing had happened. Amazing.

 

[CorsairDemon]

Yeah. Most of the fake raids will work when hooked directly up to an identical machine. Works almost every time.