I need help with a RAID

[Guest]

Hi All and thanks for any help.

I have a customers computer in the shop. It's motherboard went bad and we
have sent it off to be RMA'd. The customer came in today and wanted to see
if we could get some data off his hard drive. We hooked the 2 up to another
machine and tried to access them. They were set up in a RAID on his old
machine and it would keep saying that it needed to be formatted. My question
is... With a RAID of 2 HDD's can they be hooked up into another computer and
still work properly. They are both SATA Hard Drives. Also a couple other
questions:

When I was hooking up the hard drives I was not informed that they had been
set up as a raid. I hooked up the primary HDD and it would not recognize it.
I then hooked up the secondary HDD and it was not recognized either. I went
in to disk management and looked and it said that the HDD was not active and
asked if I wanted to set active. I did and it showed up as unallocated
space. Is there any way I can set it back to inactive? I am worried that it
will not set up in the RAID without its original settings which brings me to
my last question...

When we get his motherboard back and install it and hook it all up exactly
as it was hooked up before the board died. Will the RAID be automatically
recognized or am I going to have to perform more steps? With the secondary
being activated will this mess things up? Any help would be much
appreciated. I know I have helped people on here before with other problems
but I have NEVER worked on a RAID and am very nervous. Thanks for any help.

Joe

Kemco IT Professional

 

[R. McCarty]

You'll need to determine what RAID level the two drives compromise.
Either Redundancy or Speed or a combination of both. Without the
Host controller, it's unlikely you'll be able to see the RAID structure.
Was the RAID controller provided on the motherboard or by a add-in
PCI card ?

 

[Guest]

Pretty much what he wrote.
You will need the identical raid controller that was initially in the
machine. Its Possible that the motherboard will have the exact chipset,
raid, and everything. I wouldnt say its likely, but its possible.
With the original raid gone, its not likely you will get data off the
drives...

 

[Guest]

Well the RAID was on the motherboard not a PCI card. The motherboard was
sent back to ASUS and we are "SUPPOSED" to get an identical board or they
will fix this board we have sent in. If the board is slightly different is
there no way that we can get his data back? Can we not set up a new RAID
between the 2 HDD's and see the existing information or does that erase
everything on the discs? Also did it make any difference that I had changed
the 2nd HDD to Active or does that not matter? Thank you for your help.

Joe

Kemco IT Professional

 

[Guest]

Also, The RAID is a striped set level 1 RAID I believe because the primary
hard drive is an 80 GB but is recognized as a 160 so I am assuming that it is
declaring it and the secondary drive as one large drive which makes me assume
that it is a level 1 striped set and not mirrored. Correct me if I am wrong.
Thank you.

Joe

Kemco IT Professional

 

[R. McCarty]

There are different implementations of chipset based RAID. If you know the
ASUS MB model, you can look up the specifications and find out which
RAID controller chip is used. I wouldn't attempt to mount & access the 2
RAID drives with a different controller - it has the potential to break the
RAID and make it even more difficult to recover. Whatever MB you do
get back may not have the RAID configuration setup to match what was
originally configured. But - most controllers will allow you to Rebuild the
Array.

I've adopted a personal/business policy to (Try) and never work on a
system unless the Mass Storage device(s) are imaged 1st. It's not always
possible, but can be a lifesaver.

 

[D.Currie]

I have to wonder why you felt a need to change a drive to active if you were
trying to access data off of it. There would have been no need to do that,
whether or not raid was involved. Did it damage anything? Maybe, maybe not.
You won't know until you try to get the raid working again.

Your best bet at this point is to quit messing around with the drives until
you get the motherboard back. Anything else you do could make the situation
worse. Unless of course you're willing to foot the bill for data recovery.

Next, you might want to find someone local who is more knowledgeable about
raid, and let them work on the computer when the motherboard arrives. For
someone who works with raid a lot, it could be really simple, but
trial-and-error isn't a good approach.

And keep this experience in mind next time someone walks into your shop with
a problem that your shop has no experience with. There's no shame in saying,
"I'm sorry, we don't work on that type of thing here." You might lose a job
or a customer, but it's better than the situation you're in now.