[Tim Ellis]

I have an old computer which has died. I was running a RAID array with Striped disks, not mirrored.

Please could anyone tell me if I need the same RAID software to retrieve my data from the HDDs, or if I can plug them up to any RAID machine?


RAID array was 2x40gb HDDs, striped using High Point RAID bios, on an ABit KT7A Raid motherboard. Not SCSI HDDs.

The motherboard has died & it's not possible to replace it with the same one, as they are no longer manufactured.

Cheers in advance,

Tim.

[ivox3]

hey Tim, ....can't help with the raid question, but did find you mobo on ebay(USA) .......

http://search.ebay.com/abit-kt7a_W0QQfc ... 1QQxpufuZx

[Tim Ellis]

hey Tim, ....can't help with the raid question, but did find you mobo on ebay(USA) .......

Thanks for the link, I'm in the UK though.

I'll check out ukebay though, cheers,


Tim.

[b-kandor]

Tim, there is a program that will read the array - give me a bit to find it again and I'll post it here. Otherwise finding the same motherboard obviously will help, or find a raid card with the same chipset but backup the drives first! Also, stripped arrays really need backups! Very scary!

There have been big debates about raids because of this exact issue - do you buy a hardward controller card (fast and expensive and ties you to the card or mobo) or use software raid (slow and cheap and portable).

I lost a stripped array a year or so ago and although I did have a backup of the data I've migrated all my drives to mirrored arrays or raid5 arrays. Safety first!

Kandor

[markps]

Hi,

Were you running RAID 0 or RAID 1+0?

If it was RAID 0 it is harder to recover the data... Since this was an older controller it might store the RAID information on a differnt way.. and If you connect your hard drives to another controller you are in risk of losing the data at boot time! The best choice for you would be to find a motherboard or a controller with the same chip set. And try to make it recognize the array again...

You may also want to try these softwares.

http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm
http://www.stellarinfo.com/
http://www.ontrack.com

Besides that... If it was really RAID 0 you might be out of luck, nobody uses or should use RAID 0 anymore.

[Tim Ellis]

Thank you for the info. I built the machine back in 2001, so it could well be RAID-0.

I'll try and find out.


Cheers.

Tim.

[Leonardo]

I have abosolutely no clue what you guys are talking about.... In fact, I should have stay away from this topic once I read the word "guru" in the title, but the curiosity killed me

[b-kandor]

RAID - Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks

Many sites on the net explain raid in intricate detail.

Basically most MB's these days have one or more raid controllers on board which support raid0 or raid1.

Raid0 is a striped array where if you save a 10mb file every alternate chunk is written to an alternate drive, virtually doubling the read/write speed - however, it also doubles the risk since if either drive fails all your data is lost.

Raid1 is a mirrored array where if you save a file it is duplicated on each drive which doubles your safety since if one drive fails you lose nothing.

Many more raid levels exist with growing complexity (parity sets etc.).

Kandor

[thxraph]

Tim Ellis,

A stripping is a RAID0, and a RAID0 is a RAID0 that mean that you should be able to recover your RAID from any motherboard or raid controllers that handle RAID0

you can buy a NForce or intel motherboard that handle the RAID0, it will be ok, of a PCI or PCI-X raid controler, that will makes it too!

i own a RAID 5 (8 disks) system using a 3ware controler running linux, 2 workstation using RAID0 (2x2disks), & 2 servers using RAID1 (mirroring, 2x2disks), RAID is normalised since many time, there is for sure some propietary techologies, but mostly for advanced RAID, like RAID10 or RAID50.

if you use IDE RAID, you can buy a soft RAID controler for $20, not much more for a SATA one

thxraph

[Tim Ellis]

Great, thank you all. Especially Leo for making me laugh.


I'll sort out another IDE raid-0 MB and see what I can do.

New system has sata raid, but I'm not using it.

Cheers again,

Tim.

[thxraph]

sorry for the french website but...

http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00029227.html

17€....

thxraph

[Tim Ellis]

sorry for the french website but...

http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00029227.html

17€....

thxraph

Cheers mate, I've found this one http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductI ... ctID=17431

Although no support for Win XP x64bit. Would have been easy to add it to my Boxx, but perhaps it won't work under x64.

Tim.

[thxraph]

dont know, i only use it under linux... and it is directly reconized by the sytem (ok...if i compile the driver in the kernel or as module) dont know about windows...probably need a drivers as always...too bad! hope you'll get back your datas!

thxraph