How to avoid losing RAID config?

[DBissett]

I'm unfamiliar with software vs. hardware RAID, and using the onboard vs. card approaches so I need some help since the following happened......I was using the onboard RAID that came on my Gigabyte MB. I had a memory screwup which required resetting the BIOS to defaults according to the MB manual, and the RAID config was lost. This caused lots of headaches and downtime. I'm not going to use the onboard RAID again because of this, but is there another solution that would not cause the RAID to fail if I had MB problems again? I've heard of RAID cards but don't know if that's the way to go or not. Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Blain]

MB controllers or hardware controllers can and do fail.
If losing your RAID configuration is such a concern, why use RAID at all?

You can clone several HDs for the cost of a good hardware RAID card.

 

[DBissett]

Why?....to accomplish what RAID1 is suppose to accomplish. If cloning is a more dependable/efficient/cost effective solution then OK. I'll try that route. Thanks.

 

[Nothinman]

Software RAID is the most portable since it works with any hardware configuration. But if you want RAID1 and you're using Windows then you're pretty much screwed with regards to software RAID since client versions of Windows doesn't allow redundant RAID levels.

If you go the card route the config will likely either be stored on the card or the drives so resetting your BIOS settings shouldn't affect it, but I haven't used any of the cheap, consumer cards so I can't say with 100% certainty.

 

[KentState]

That's why you need to backup your array. RAID is meant to provide redundancy in case of a hard drive failure to prevent down time. In order to prevent downtime when a RAID controller or other component fails, you need a redundant system.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: KentState
That's why you need to backup your array. RAID is meant to provide redundancy in case of a hard drive failure to prevent down time. In order to prevent downtime when a RAID controller or other component fails, you need a redundant system.

A+

 

[Emulex]

raid config should be written to each drive.

seagate makes drives that have a WWN so you can move the drives around and the controller will recognize this and not get confused.

hp has a solid design you can even take a raid set in a pc and move it to an msa enclosure and go (boot).

it would be crappy to only store the raid config in the bios nvram. poor design.

i've actually seen a raid controller failure (controller card) ; the battery back write cache was enabled and working. replacing the raid controller and putting the bbwc in the new controller allowed the remaining bits in the battery back ram to write to the disks.

 

[betaflame]

Gigabyte raid is the JMB36X controller normally, and it's terrible.

ICH-R (intel) onboard raid stores the config on the drives themselves so you don't lose it to the bios and you can move them between controllers.

 

[DBissett]

MB has Intel ICH10R chip. I don't know what's meant by "storing the RAID config on the HD". Basically when I reset the BIOS to defaults to resolve the memory issue I lost the RAID setting there and could not get it back. IIRC when I attempted to just reset the BIOS to RAID I got endless rebooting, and I couldn't boot up without setting to RAID either. Ended up using GetDataBAck to recover and have not revisited RAID.

 

[jgigz]

A little off topic, but if you are using a raid controller card, switch motherboards, do you loose the raid configuration and array?

 

[Syntax Error]

The RAID data should either be stored on the NVRAM of your RAID controller card (provided it's a legit RAID controller card and not a fakeRAID card) and on the metadata of the first few sectors of your hard disk drive.

As for DBissett's situation, he should've been able to restore the RAID in BIOS just by enabling RAID; from there, the metadata on the disks would inform the RAID controller that a RAID array exists and carry on from there.

Just another lesson, I guess. RAID is never backup.

 

[betaflame]

Hrm, with ICH10R, setting the BIOS back to raid mode immediately should have restored the RAID.

 

[DBissett]

Hmm, the key word is probably "immediately", which I don't think I did. There's an instruction in the Gigabyte manual to reset the BIOS to "optimized defaults" to overcome the problem I was dealing with and from there I rebooted. Maybe I should have set to "optimized defaults" and then reset to RAID before rebooting.

 

[betaflame]

There was a program the recovered data from damaged RAID arrays, but I can't remember what it was. Worked on an ICH10R screw up exactly like what you are describing.