Accessing single SATA drives

Y

Yst

So I've got a now aging Asus K8V with an integrated Promise RAID
controller to which I have attached, aside from a few PATA drives, an
SATA 200GB drive. I have long had that single SATA drive running alone
on one of the two RAID controllers on the K8V and have used it
frequently. I today purchased an additional SATA 250GB drive in the
hopes that I would be able to transfer data off a couple of my older
PATA drives and ditch them (having originally had an absurd 6 HDs in the
system) , while keeping the old 200GB SATA and new 250GB SATA along with
my IDE boot drive. Whether these SATA drives were to be united as a
single RAID drive in the end or not was effectively irrelevant to me, as
long as I retained my old data from the 200GB.

So the problem is this: I cannot figure out how to get the new drive up
and running while retaining all the data currently existing on my prior
200GB SATA. I'm fairly certain that when I originally set up the 200GB
drive, I set it up in the VIA RAID BIOS as a single drive array (or
perhaps incomplete array), which was fine, and worked at the time and
has for the last year and a half.

In attempting to retain the data from that drive and add the new one,
however, I found myself absolutely unable to unearth any such
possibility this time around for the new drive. The RAID BIOS will allow
me to span data across the drives, mirror the data, or stripe it, but no
options exist for using the drives independently (either by creating two
incomplete arrays or any other means). But booting with either single
drive attached alone results in the RAID BIOS providing no available
options save to exit, and booting with both drives attached allows no
option for configuring them independently.

In response to this, I attempted to span data across the two drives
while retaining the data from the original drive (the VIA RAID BIOS
asked if I wanted to retain the original data in the new array, which
was reassuring, as I did). I was able to create this array, but upon
entering Windows, it became apparent (somewhat predictably, I'll grant)
that Windows did not recognise the new array as partitioned or
formatted, so this does me no good as far as retaining my old data goes.

So I'm worse than when I started at present, unable to access the data
on the 200GB drive which this morning was functioning by itself and
recognised by the RAID BIOS, and unable to add the new drive to my
system without doing something I know will destroy my data (i.e.,
creating a new array then partitioning and formatting it).

Any advice on what I can do?
 
A

Arno Wagner

Previously Yst said:
So I've got a now aging Asus K8V with an integrated Promise RAID
controller to which I have attached, aside from a few PATA drives, an
SATA 200GB drive. I have long had that single SATA drive running alone
on one of the two RAID controllers on the K8V and have used it
frequently. I today purchased an additional SATA 250GB drive in the
hopes that I would be able to transfer data off a couple of my older
PATA drives and ditch them (having originally had an absurd 6 HDs in the
system) , while keeping the old 200GB SATA and new 250GB SATA along with
my IDE boot drive. Whether these SATA drives were to be united as a
single RAID drive in the end or not was effectively irrelevant to me, as
long as I retained my old data from the 200GB.
So the problem is this: I cannot figure out how to get the new drive up
and running while retaining all the data currently existing on my prior
200GB SATA. I'm fairly certain that when I originally set up the 200GB
drive, I set it up in the VIA RAID BIOS as a single drive array (or
perhaps incomplete array), which was fine, and worked at the time and
has for the last year and a half.
In attempting to retain the data from that drive and add the new one,
however, I found myself absolutely unable to unearth any such
possibility this time around for the new drive. The RAID BIOS will allow
me to span data across the drives, mirror the data, or stripe it, but no
options exist for using the drives independently (either by creating two
incomplete arrays or any other means). But booting with either single
drive attached alone results in the RAID BIOS providing no available
options save to exit, and booting with both drives attached allows no
option for configuring them independently.
In response to this, I attempted to span data across the two drives
while retaining the data from the original drive (the VIA RAID BIOS
asked if I wanted to retain the original data in the new array, which
was reassuring, as I did). I was able to create this array, but upon
entering Windows, it became apparent (somewhat predictably, I'll grant)
that Windows did not recognise the new array as partitioned or
formatted, so this does me no good as far as retaining my old data goes.
So I'm worse than when I started at present, unable to access the data
on the 200GB drive which this morning was functioning by itself and
recognised by the RAID BIOS, and unable to add the new drive to my
system without doing something I know will destroy my data (i.e.,
creating a new array then partitioning and formatting it).
Any advice on what I can do?

As for your data, simply resore from backup. If you do not
have one, you just learned not to mess around with the only
copy of something you consider of some value.

As to the SATA RAID problem, it seems to me that the RAID BIOS is
unusable for what you want to do. Best thing I can think of
is to buy a PCI SATA controller and forget about the on-board one.

Arno
 

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