Changing RAID chipsets

[nwguyhere]

I recently had an MSI MB completely die on me. Since this isnt the
first time i'd had trouble with an MSI MB, i decided to replace it
with a Gigabyte MB. The problem is that the MSI board had a Promise
20378 raid chipset that I was using RAID 0 with. The Gigabyte board
had a GigaRAID chipset.

You can probably guess where this is going. Needless to say, the
gigabyte board couldnt read the two 40G drives and they showed as an
unformated 80G drive.

The data on the drive is not mission critical (which is why i risked
RAID 0), but it would be very helpful to get the data back. Anyone
have any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

~K

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[Arno Wagner]

I recently had an MSI MB completely die on me. Since this isnt the
first time i'd had trouble with an MSI MB, i decided to replace it
with a Gigabyte MB. The problem is that the MSI board had a Promise
20378 raid chipset that I was using RAID 0 with. The Gigabyte board
had a GigaRAID chipset.

You can probably guess where this is going. Needless to say, the
gigabyte board couldnt read the two 40G drives and they showed as an
unformated 80G drive.

The data on the drive is not mission critical (which is why i risked
RAID 0), but it would be very helpful to get the data back. Anyone
have any suggestions?

Get/borrow a promise controller with the same chipset.

This is one of the dirty little secrets of hardware-RAID:
You need a spare controller in case the controller dies.

Arno

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

Get/borrow a promise controller with the same chipset.

If he is seeing RAID now, he must have either configured it
or it is interpreting the Promise info.
Unless they store the RAID info in different places, going
back to a Promise will likely see two unconfigured drives.

 

[Folkert Rienstra]

I recently had an MSI MB completely die on me. Since this isnt the
first time i'd had trouble with an MSI MB, i decided to replace it
with a Gigabyte MB. The problem is that the MSI board had a Promise
20378 raid chipset that I was using RAID 0 with. The Gigabyte board
had a GigaRAID chipset.

You can probably guess where this is going. Needless to say, the
gigabyte board couldnt read the two 40G drives and they showed as an
unformated

80G drive.

So you must have configured the RAID. If it doesn't see the partition(s)
you either misconfigured it -compared to the previous configuration-
or the partition tables "died" with it when your MoBo died.

See if Svend's FindPart (www.partitionsupport.com) can make some sense of it.

 

[dg]

I was recently told about a program called "raid reconstructor". I just
briefly browsed the manufacturers web site and I understand that this
program can analyze your raid drives in a new PC and figure out what the
raid parameters were. It can then copy the data to the destination you
specify. The program doesn't change the source drives, only recovers data
and writes to a new location. This requires another large destination if
your raid array was really big.

I did not spend much time reading their web site, I could be wrong on the
above. Its worth looking into if your array was very important.

--Dan

 

[Arno Wagner]

If he is seeing RAID now, he must have either configured it
or it is interpreting the Promise info.
Unless they store the RAID info in different places, going
back to a Promise will likely see two unconfigured drives.

Possibly, but not necessarily. The "80GB unformatted" could
just be a preview information of what will be available after
initializing the drives as RAID0. However I tend to agree that
these drives seem to have been initialized for a RAID0.

The controller will likely not interpret the Promise info, at least
not correctly, since then the drives would be readable.

Best approach would still be to try with the old controller first,
IMO, since everything else likely means giving up the data.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

I was recently told about a program called "raid reconstructor". I just
briefly browsed the manufacturers web site and I understand that this
program can analyze your raid drives in a new PC and figure out what the
raid parameters were. It can then copy the data to the destination you
specify. The program doesn't change the source drives, only recovers data
and writes to a new location. This requires another large destination if
your raid array was really big.

I did not spend much time reading their web site, I could be wrong on the
above. Its worth looking into if your array was very important.

Doing this should be possible. It might require knowing the different
RAID descriptor blocks fro different brands, but reverse engineering
them should not be that difficult.

Also not changing the source drives is one of the requirements for
any professional data recovery tool. Sounds good.

URL: http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

And the price is reasonable: 30 days free trial and 99USD afterwards.
I would say, give it a try and report the results here afterwards.

Arno

 

[nwguyhere]

Thanks everyone, I'll try a few of your suggestions and get back to
you.

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