Moving RAID drives from one pc to another

[mtimerding]

Good Morning All, and Happy New Year

My current system is an Asus K8V motherboard
which I had a JBOD Raid config of two Maxtor 300gb
SATA drives where I kept about 500gb of data stored
on, along with my two IDE drives. They were connected to
the onboard VIA Sata controller.

That system died, either the motherboard (or could have
been the power supply I suppose) and I just said to hell
with it, didnt feel like trouble shooting it, replacing parts
one at a time, etc. so I just ordered another entirely new
system. (from Alienware, an Aurora 7500) That new
system has an Alienware NFORCE motherboard, with
two onboard SATA controllers as well (tho I dont know if
they are VIA or not)

Can I just take the 2 sata drives from my old system, and
plug them into this new one, and have them still be in a jbod
config with all my data intact or should I just prepare to have
lost all the data? (I'm asking cause the new system is on order,
but is not here yet, and I wanna know what to expect)

Thanks

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Changing a Motherboard or Moving a Hard Drive with XP Installed
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows - Shell/User
Microsoft Community Newsgroups
news://msnews.microsoft.com/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| Good Morning All, and Happy New Year
|
| My current system is an Asus K8V motherboard
| which I had a JBOD Raid config of two Maxtor 300gb
| SATA drives where I kept about 500gb of data stored
| on, along with my two IDE drives. They were connected to
| the onboard VIA Sata controller.
|
| That system died, either the motherboard (or could have
| been the power supply I suppose) and I just said to hell
| with it, didnt feel like trouble shooting it, replacing parts
| one at a time, etc. so I just ordered another entirely new
| system. (from Alienware, an Aurora 7500) That new
| system has an Alienware NFORCE motherboard, with
| two onboard SATA controllers as well (tho I dont know if
| they are VIA or not)
|
| Can I just take the 2 sata drives from my old system, and
| plug them into this new one, and have them still be in a jbod
| config with all my data intact or should I just prepare to have
| lost all the data? (I'm asking cause the new system is on order,
| but is not here yet, and I wanna know what to expect)
|
| Thanks

 

[Guest]

I cant figure why carrie fisk mvp still enters "repair xp" topics on this
subject,its wasting youre time.To move a IDE or RAID drive- C: To another
computer,one must do a clean installation of xp......

 

[DL]

Rarely can another raid controler read/use a disk created with another brand
controler. (Even if it did I would have no confidence in the sys)
Even with same brand it may not allways work

 

[mtimerding]

Rarely can another raid controler read/use a disk created with another
brand controler. (Even if it did I would have no confidence in the sys)
Even with same brand it may not allways work

Thanks for the response ....judging from the other replies to this
question I guess I didn't clearly specify my dilemma. This current
Raid array has just data on it .... and I am hoping to install the
drives in the new computer just long enough to recover the data
(if it is possible) .... this raid does not have an OS on it, or will it
be the drive that contains the os. The new computer was ordered
with two 500gb drives, (sata), and Windows XP Pro. So I am not
planning on having to 'reinstall' the os or to use the old raid drives
as the 'System' drive.

The data currently on these drives is my entire DVD collection backed
up on my computer. So, if it can't be saved .... not the end of the
world, I could just recopy the dvd's onto the new pc if I HAD to.
(just would take a hell of a long time to recopy em all again (500 gb's
worth))

Even tho it is convienent to have a JBOD raid array that appears as
just one HUGE drive, I suppose it would be best when I recopy
everything, to just install the two SATA drives in a NON-Raid array and
thus have em appear as two seperate drives in 'My Computer' .....
don't ya think?

 

[Richard Urban]

Horse manure!

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[DL]

Raid, even mirror raid is not an alternative to a backup.
With JBOD, you *may* be able to recover the data.
I would suggest, assuming new sys is running, adding a single disk from your
origonal JBOD array and checking if data is readable, if it is copy data to
one of the new disks. Then do the same with the other jbod array disk.
Once data recovered format the hd's and use as a backup or whatever.
Even if your new sys has raid, it is unlikely that you will be able recreate
the jbod array

I havent had an in depth look at raid controlers, as supplied on the mobo,
so I dont know whether they have the same capability as a decent raid
controler card.
I currently have a mobo with two raid controlers, but from past experience,
I'm using a raid controler card - which the manu suports!! - in mirror raid
with a third hotswap hd. The card retails at $380 - that may tell you
something!

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

On 1-Jan-2006, "DL" <[email protected]> wrote:

Thanks for the response ....judging from the other replies to this
question I guess I didn't clearly specify my dilemma. This current
Raid array has just data on it ....

Unlike the XP installation itself (which is a fragile, brittle PoS in
this context), data can be copied off at the file level. Use the old
setup to copy to a non-RAID HD, then from there to the new PC's RAID.

OTOH, if the old system is dead, well - it's like NTFS, or disk
compression in the DOS 6 / Stacker days. If you live with
data-dangerous technologies, you must prepare to die by them too.
"Just" restore from whatever backups you had made.

RAID 0 is for workspace only, never data storage, IMO. I use RAID 0
only for the workspace HD, and partition as large a HD as I can get as
the system HD, with the bulk of the capacity set aside for
trivially-easy storage of work in progress on the RAID 0.

RAID 1 helps protect data, but paradoxically adds an extra difficulty
in data survival, so it also needs backing up in case...
- something kills both RAID 1 HDs at the same time
- something kills the PC hardware so RAID 1 can't be read
- something corrupts the RAID 1 contents at a logical level
- unwanted chages in contents are found that predates backups

Many of the things that kill HDs, will strike both halves of a RAID 1
at the same time. It's not a hedge against all disaster patterns.

---------- ----- ---- --- -- - - - -

Don't pay malware vendors - boycott Sony

 

[Frank]

These people don't even read the posts. He stated that he had
about 500gb of _data_. Nothing at all about XP. Since these
RAID utilities are so different from each other, it would be hard to
say. JBOD should not be a problem. 500gb is a lot to back up,
but it should be done.

 

[Frank]

Thanks for the response ....judging from the other replies to this
question I guess I didn't clearly specify my dilemma. This current
Raid array has just data on it .... and I am hoping to install the
drives in the new computer just long enough to recover the data
(if it is possible) .... this raid does not have an OS on it, or will
it be the drive that contains the os. The new computer was ordered
with two 500gb drives, (sata), and Windows XP Pro. So I am not
planning on having to 'reinstall' the os or to use the old raid drives
as the 'System' drive.

The data currently on these drives is my entire DVD collection backed
up on my computer. So, if it can't be saved .... not the end of the
world, I could just recopy the dvd's onto the new pc if I HAD to.
(just would take a hell of a long time to recopy em all again (500
gb's worth))

Even tho it is convienent to have a JBOD raid array that appears as
just one HUGE drive, I suppose it would be best when I recopy
everything, to just install the two SATA drives in a NON-Raid array
and thus have em appear as two seperate drives in 'My Computer' .....
don't ya think?

YEP

 

[Leythos]

These people don't even read the posts. He stated that he had
about 500gb of _data_. Nothing at all about XP. Since these
RAID utilities are so different from each other, it would be hard to
say. JBOD should not be a problem. 500gb is a lot to back up,
but it should be done.

The real issue is knowing the controller that provides the RAID function
and if the new board has the same controller. In some cases, like a
Mirror, you can move drives between controllers of the same vendor, in
others, since the controller formats the drives you can't.

We don't know if the chap is using R1 or R0, since it's just two drives
and 500GB, I suspect it's R0. To me, it would be a crap shoot, meaning
that R0 is bad enough, but moving them to another controller is a risky
move at any time.

There is no way anyone here, unless the have experience with R0 on the
exact same platforms, could say if it will work or not.

 

[Frank]

The real issue is knowing the controller that provides the RAID
function and if the new board has the same controller. In some cases,
like a Mirror, you can move drives between controllers of the same
vendor, in others, since the controller formats the drives you can't.

We don't know if the chap is using R1 or R0, since it's just two
drives and 500GB, I suspect it's R0. To me, it would be a crap shoot,
meaning that R0 is bad enough, but moving them to another controller
is a risky move at any time.

There is no way anyone here, unless the have experience with R0 on the
exact same platforms, could say if it will work or not.

YEP

 

[Guest]

Having a JBOD is not really the way you want to go. this is pretty much the
same as using software RAID, it is really unsafe for data. Your data is
potentially spanned across two drives of potentially different sizes,
everyone will tell you that JBOD is size independant, you could have 2x250 Gb
drives or 1 200 and 1 300 Gb drive, they would work the same in this RAID.
Either way, do not count on having your data unless to can go into the BIOS
of the new RAID controller and identify which drive goes where on the
controller. If the data is that important, buy the exact same mobo and try to
rebuild it from an os'd drive with the drivers, but you will have problems
regardless. The best way of keeping your data secure is mirror or one form of
it. I am possibly looking at RAID 5 with 6x500 Gb drives to keep my data
safe, plus the o/s on another mirrored set of drives. Invest the money in a
controller card, Promise TX2300 does SATA RAID and is pretty cheap. Good luck
with keeping the data, if you do, spend the $100 and get the controller.

 

[Robert Bodling]

May I ask a stupid question? What is a RAID drive?

 

[Bob I]

RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
RAID Drive is the group as an object.