Move RAID striped pair to another PC?

[Ian R]

Hi

A friend of mine asked me over to assist in backing up the data from
his hard drive.

His windows XP is in a perpetual bootup/reboot loop and the only option
seems to be a reinstall of Windows using his recovery disc. This will
of course reformat the drive and restore it to factory fresh so his
data needs to be retrieved first.

I went over expecting it to be a single HDD which I planned to put into an
external USB case and then copy the data to my laptop.
But I had a big surprise to find he has a striped RAID (he doesn't know
about the benefits and implications of this).

Of course the USB external case to laptop idea went out the window.

So the question is, if I mount his two drives into another PC (which
probably has a different RAID controller) will I be able to access the
data so that I can copy it to other media.

What precautions do I need to take in order to keep his data intact.

Your assistance and advice would be greatly appreciated as I've little
experience of RAID.

Many thanks for your time.

Ian

 

[Gerhard Fiedler]

A friend of mine asked me over to assist in backing up the data from
his hard drive.

His windows XP is in a perpetual bootup/reboot loop and the only option
seems to be a reinstall of Windows using his recovery disc.

Another option could be to boot into the recovery console (possibly
installing the appropriate driver for the RAID controller) and from there
copy the files to a different disk.

This will of course reformat the drive and restore it to factory fresh

Not necessarily. From a Microsoft Windows CD, you can usually do a repair
install, or install into a different directory, which should both leave
your existing data alone. May not work with all OEM CDs, I don't know.

Gerhard

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi

A friend of mine asked me over to assist in backing up the data from
his hard drive.

His windows XP is in a perpetual bootup/reboot loop and the only option
seems to be a reinstall of Windows using his recovery disc. This will
of course reformat the drive and restore it to factory fresh so his
data needs to be retrieved first.

I went over expecting it to be a single HDD which I planned to put into an
external USB case and then copy the data to my laptop.
But I had a big surprise to find he has a striped RAID (he doesn't know
about the benefits and implications of this).

Of course the USB external case to laptop idea went out the window.

So the question is, if I mount his two drives into another PC (which
probably has a different RAID controller) will I be able to access the
data so that I can copy it to other media.

Unlikely. The problem is not the striopes, but the descriptor-block.
IMO different vendors are intentionally incompatible to each other.

What precautions do I need to take in order to keep his data intact.

Don't write to the disks.

Your assistance and advice would be greatly appreciated as I've little
experience of RAID.

There is another option: Make a fresh install of windows onto an
additional disk (remove the RAID), connect it to the normal IDE
controler and make this the first (boot) disk. Then try to access the
data on the RAID from this new installation.

Other than that, I can only thing of using some RAID recovery software,
like this one: http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

Arno

 

[Andy]

Hi

A friend of mine asked me over to assist in backing up the data from
his hard drive.

His windows XP is in a perpetual bootup/reboot loop and the only option
seems to be a reinstall of Windows using his recovery disc. This will
of course reformat the drive and restore it to factory fresh so his
data needs to be retrieved first.

I went over expecting it to be a single HDD which I planned to put into an
external USB case and then copy the data to my laptop.
But I had a big surprise to find he has a striped RAID (he doesn't know
about the benefits and implications of this).

Of course the USB external case to laptop idea went out the window.

So the question is, if I mount his two drives into another PC (which
probably has a different RAID controller) will I be able to access the
data so that I can copy it to other media.

What precautions do I need to take in order to keep his data intact.

Your assistance and advice would be greatly appreciated as I've little
experience of RAID.

i'd load a new copy of windows on the system on a new hard drive
& then connect the old raid controller (since it's probably the
only way you're ever going to be able to read what's on the disks)
& it's hard drives in NON-booting mode & then copy the data

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[Ian R]

Thanks Guys

Really appreciate the help.

Yes I think a new OS install to a third disk is the way to go and then
access the RAID from there. Great idea. Why didn't I think of that!

A few questions...

1. How do I set the RAID in non boot mode? Is that just set in the BIOS
where I choose to boot from first IDE instead?

2. Once I've got the data off the RAID, I thought it would save a lot of
time to make a disc image of the new OS on C drive (saves reinstalling the
whole thing from scratch), reconnect the RAID as boot drives then restore
the image to the RAID. Is this possible?

Do you know of any imaging software that could restore to a RAID?

Thanks again,

Ian I^)

 

[Arno Wagner]

Thanks Guys

Really appreciate the help.

Yes I think a new OS install to a third disk is the way to go and then
access the RAID from there. Great idea. Why didn't I think of that!

It happens. But you did the next best thing: You asked people
that thought of it.

A few questions...

1. How do I set the RAID in non boot mode? Is that just set in the BIOS
where I choose to boot from first IDE instead?

Should be. Maybe (unlikely) you also have to set something in the
RAID-controller BIOS (has its separate message after the mainboard BIOS).

2. Once I've got the data off the RAID, I thought it would save a lot of
time to make a disc image of the new OS on C drive (saves reinstalling the
whole thing from scratch), reconnect the RAID as boot drives then restore
the image to the RAID. Is this possible?

You want to copy the system partition on the single disk to the
system partition on the RAID? Should be possible with typical
imaging software.

Do you know of any imaging software that could restore to a RAID?

If the RAID is transparent (i.e. does not need drivers), any of them
sjpuld be able to do it. If it needs drivers, it gets more tricky.
Don't really know. Maybe somebody else here has done this before?

Arno