Epox 8k7a+ to 8KRA2+ : Can I save my RAID array?

[NHHokie]

My Epox 8k7a+ mobo died. I don't know what happened, but suddenly it won't boot at all and the LED remains at FF. I tried reseating all the chips, tried removing everything and reinstalling. Nothing. OCCASIONALLY it would boot ok and would work as if nothing was wrong, but if I had to reboot, it would not. I went to backup everything to CDROM once I knew what was going on, but it died before I could (actually it required me to reinstall the drivers....with reboot and that reboot never came again, sigh).

I have a EPOX 8KRA2+ (also with HighPoint RAID controller). Can I swap out the motherboards and recover my data? I've got a LOT of graphics files as well as data files that haven't been backed up for a few weeks (I used MS backup to one of the RAID drives for incremental backups and only backed up vital stuff to CDROM monthly due to time constraints). I never thought the mobo would be the thing to die.

Anyway, should I keep trying to revive the mobo or do you think I can get in and backup data then wipe fresh and reinstall?

BTW, I have 4 IBM 40GB drives with striping, but no mirroring.

I have time to do the mobo swap today, but otherwise have to wait till the weekend. What should I do?

Thanks for any suggestions.

Dave

 

[EeyoreX]

If the two motherboards have the same Highpoint chipset, it should be no problem to recover the array and get your data. I can't say for certain, as I have never done this (personally, I see little use for RAID on my desktop, I won't utilize it). Bottom line, is that it should work when going to and from the same RAID chipset.

\Dan