Desktop died, but what about my Raid0 array?

[Pacal]

Greetings-- first time post here,

My desktop recently bit the dust and I'm wondering if I buy a USB Raid Enabled Enclosure if I can restore the data on the two hard drives?

If anyone has any experience restoring raid arrays, please don't hesitate to comment.

~Pacal

 

[Captante]

First of all a lot depends on why your PC died... any number of things could have happened that would corrupt the data on your drives so you can't recover it & RAID 0 is particularly fragile in that regard, however assuming your data survived intact, you might be able to restore it using the enclosure attached to another PC... I've never tried it personally though.

The next question is what type of RAID controller were you using... I've used a 4-port Promise PCI SATA RAID controller on my second machine with a 4 drive RAID 0+1 & its survived 3 motherboard swaps (in bootable condition much less) however if you were using on-board RAID its much less likely to work out unless you get ahold of the same motherboard you had before, or at the least a board using the same type of RAID controller.

I've also had some success recovering a 120gb RAID 0 array that was running off of a Promise IDE RAID controller built onto an old MSI BX motherboard I had years ago by using a newer Promise PCI IDE controller ... I was able to read the array & recover the data but was not able to make that one boot

 

[Pacal]

Its an Asus A7V333 with Promise 20276 RAID controller. I'm not entirely sure what happened, I walked away while I had several intense programs running and when I returned it was a dark screen and I heard no harddisks spinning or memory firing. I rebooted, but to no avail. So I suspect the video card probably went and *maybe* the cpu...

Can I buy one of these external usb drive enclosures that have raid 0 compatibility and restore the data? Which enclosure would you recommend?

~pacal

 

[Captante]

If you have a Promise controller on the motherboard, I'd suggest going with what worked for me, which is a Promise PCI RAID controller instead of the USB enclosure... just install it in your new system but have it boot off of another hard-drive with your Windows install & you should be able to access the array again & back up your data to the boot drive, or you could try and get ahold of either another A7V333 which would allow you to use the onboard Promise chip.

You could go ahead & try the USB RAID enclosure & it may work, however all of the decent ones are very expensive & I've never tried it myself.... again I'd say your best bet is the add-in Promise card which can be purchased for approx $75 & is very likely to work in my experience as long as the HD's aren't corrupted or damaged.

 

[Pacal]

The only problem with that is, I don't intend on replacing my desktop. I'm opting for a laptop this time around so I think my choices are limited.

~Pacal

 

[Captante]

That is a problem & what it comes down to is how much the data on that array is worth to you.

I doubt you'll have any luck using seperate USB drive enclosures which implement RAID using software in Windows, so you'll need to buy a stand-alone enclosure that does RAID in its own BIOS & then hope that the drives arn't hosed ... somthing like this product might work, but for the money you'll end up spending you could go the other way & have a cheap desktop as well as a laptop... if it were me I'd post a WTB ad on FS/FT here on AT for an A7V333, I'll bet you can get a used one for less then $20.

USB RAID Enclosure: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822333001

 

[amdskip]

An enclosure will not work. I too recommend purchasing a replacement motherboard identical to what you had. Raid 0 != data storage

 

[RebateMonger]

Assuming you have no data backups, then the best solution is to find a working motherboard with the same RAID chips onboard and put your disk array onto that motherboard.

DO NOT get the drive positions mixed up on the new motherboard! If you reverse them, your data will be gone forever.

I recommend purchasing a suitably-sized USB external hard drive for making ongoing backups in the future. That way, you won't have this problem the next time your hard drive fails, which it wil....

 

[Captante]

Don't forget the Promise PCI add-in card option will very likely work too if you can't find the exact same motherboard... as long as you go with a KT266/333/400 board you have a decent chance of success getting the array to boot as well as be readable, using a different chipset like an NForce 2 that'll never happen but you may still be able to read the array.

Somthing like this would do the job, but I bet you can find an older version for less money that'll work too:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102008

 

[Pacal]

Thanks for all the information.

~Pacal