Need to Migrate RAID 0 to a New Motherboard

[CurseTheSky]

My boss's computer recently stopped booting (either a bad motherboard or a bad PSU), and rather than fooling around with Dell's components (they have their own form factor for PSU, motherboard, power connectors, ugh), we're looking at reusing some parts and building the rest new.

The motherboard he has right now is most likely an nForce 4 SLI. We're probably looking at going with either a 680i, or 780 / 790i chipset (his XPS had dual 7800GTX's, and I doubt he'll want to shelve one). The problem is, he has two 74GB Raptors in RAID 0, and the drives have some data on them that we want to get off. There's one partition for the OS, and another partition that was being used as a shared company drive.

If we migrate the drives to a new motherboard, is there any way we can boot into Safe Mode to get data off either partition? I realize we'll need to reformat for the chipset; I'm mainly interested in seeing if we can boot it up long enough to get some critical data off.

Thanks.

 

[postmortemIA]

problem is in windows you need same chipset as you have now, otherwise it won't be recognized as a RAID partition.

you could try with some linux distro that reads win RAID (suse, fedora, centos), my impression was that they don't care for chipset (obviously that matters in windows - you need driver and it would be ), but they read raw data and figure out wo's RAID it is (nvraid, ich10R, etc.)

 

[RebateMonger]

The most reliable solution would be to acquire an identical, working, Dell PC. There's likely tons of them on eBay matching your boss'. Most likely it'll be less than $200. If the PC has failed, and not the hard drives, then that's a small price to pay for the recovery of company data stored on a RAID 0 array. If you atttempt your own data recovery in other ways, you run the risk of making a mistake, and RAID 0 arrays aren't very forgiving. I wouldn't take a chance on it when you can plug the drives into a working Dell and be done with it.

After you are done, I suggest getting a backup solution. You could get a "company-wide" solution (as long as the company has less than ten PCs) by installing the (now $100) Windows Home Server software on a spare PC, along with suitable hard drive(s). Otherwise, get some good backup software for any PCs with important data and back them up to a shared drive on the network.

 

[mpilchfamily]

If it wasn't a raid 0 configuration then you could connect them to a differnt PC and get it working long enough to back up the drives. But since its in a raid 0 the board you get would have to have the same raid controler as the original so it could access the raid. The difference in chipsets can be worked around teporarly but the miss matched raid controlers cannot.

 

[Nothinman]

You might be able to activate the array and get the data off using dmraid in Linux, but I don't know of anything similar for Windows and it still might not work unless you have the same motherboard and chipset.

 

[Denithor]

RebateMonger +1

...but keep in mind Dell has a bad habit of changing components in the same model number system without any indication this happened, so just buying another XPS of the same model is no guarantee of getting one with the same motherboard. You're almost going to have to find a replacement motherboard to drop in instead of another computer.

Obviously, if you suspect bad PSU try that first, much easier/cheaper.

And Dell hasn't done the non-standard components in several years, look inside there to confirm but I'll bet you can just drop in a standard ATX PSU/motherboard and be back in business.

EDIT: This is one of those reasons people around here recommend against Raid0 arrays.

 

[Nothinman]

EDIT: This is one of those reasons people around here recommend against Raid0 arrays.

The reasons for RAID0 are different, this is a reason against using onboard RAID.

 

[Denithor]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

EDIT: This is one of those reasons people around here recommend against Raid0 arrays.

The reasons for RAID0 are different, this is a reason against using onboard RAID.

I know. The main reason is double your chances for total failure & data loss. With no real-world (in desktop apps, anyway) performance improvements for your efforts. But raid0 just seems to be a PITA for no good reason in most cases. And newbies still constantly ask if they should get 2x250GB drives for raid0 instead of 1x500GB.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: Denithor
...but keep in mind Dell has a bad habit of changing components in the same model number system without any indication this happened, so just buying another XPS of the same model is no guarantee of getting one with the same motherboard.

I'll admit to not being intimately familiar with every recent Dell desktop, but I'm under the impression that Dell wouldn't be changing MOTHERBOARD components without a model number change. Case in point: Doing a RAID chipset change, on a particular model would make offering BIOS updates a problem, since the BIOS has to be written for the RAID chipset, too. I've never seen a case where Dell had multiple sets of BIOS offerings for the same Dell model.

While it certainly would be good to double check a particular motherboard choice, as long as it's the same model and approximate age as the original, it should be a safe bet.

 

[taltamir]

he has two 74GB Raptors in RAID 0, and the drives have some data on them that we want to get off

Tsk, storing data on a raid 0 array? YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER EVER EVER! do that...

Anyways... my experience has been that nforce mobos are backwards and forwards compatible with their raid... as in... i moved a raid5 array from an nforce 4 to nforce 2 to nforce 5 without a hitch, just plug and it works.
But there is no guarentee that it will work. What you SHOULD do is:
1. Repair his computer, and get the data off of it.
or
1. Move the raid 0 array to an identical hardware computer (make sure to set the bios up similarly first). and get the data off of it

2. Build a whole new computer, reusing components, and creating a new raid0 array using the same drives on a new controller of choice.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Let me clarify a few things...

1 - Thanks for the help and advice everyone. Much appreciated.

2 - This is one of the older (first gen? Pentium D, 2 GB DDR2, 2x7800GTX) Dell XPS systems, and they do use their own components, connectors, etc. for many things. For example, the power connector (next to the CPU, I forget what it's called) that normally has four pins has ten on the XPS. The main power connector (24 pin) has different shapes for some of the pins, keeping you from using a standard PSU.

3 - We ordered a new motherboard AND new PSU from Dell. As Denithor mentioned, Dell changed the PSU without changing the model number. The old PSU has a 10 pin power connector (mentioned above), while the new one has a 12 pin (capacitors near the connector make it impossible to even try plugging in just ten out of the twelve pins; I could manually wire it, but...). The cables are also 1/3rd the length of the old PSU's cables, making it impossible to hook everything up normally.

4 - The motherboard has visible leaking capacitors, but migrating everything over to the new motherboard STILL didn't fix the problem (it boots now, but crashes in BIOS, while loading Windows, etc.), so the PSU must be bad as well. The new PSU isn't the right one, so I can't test it. We've verified the memory, graphics card, processor, etc. are all working fine.

5 - I would personally NEVER store critical data on RAID 0. This is my boss's computer, and he didn't even know it had RAID 0 when he bought it (he's so busy, he doesn't have time to go through the system specs; he wanted something he could game on and use for work).

6 - After this fiasco is all done, he's letting me build him a new computer. We just need to get the data off in the mean time.

 

[RebateMonger]

Dell has about twenty-two different XPS models. Which one is yours?

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: CurseTheSky
3 - We ordered a new motherboard AND new PSU from Dell. As Denithor mentioned, Dell changed the PSU without changing the model number. The old PSU has a 10 pin power connector (mentioned above), while the new one has a 12 pin (capacitors near the connector make it impossible to even try plugging in just ten out of the twelve pins; I could manually wire it, but...).'s letting me build him a new computer. We just need to get the data off in the mean time.

Go by frys, there is a 12 to 10 pin PSU adapter for under 10$.

 

[CurseTheSky]

This is the XPS 600.

Unfortunately there aren't any Frys around here (Connecticut). Can you give me a link to the adapter you're talking about?

Thanks.

 

[Infernus]

Not that it really applies to the original poster, but I successfully went from a SB600 based motherboard to a SB750 based motherboard with a RAID 0 array and it picked up the array just fine and didn't have to reinstall Windows.