mobo RAID died, is data gone?

[JimKiler]

I own an ASUS A8N-SLI deluxe mobo with RAID and I had 2 hard drives in Raid 1. The hard drives are fine but if the motherboard died any chance i can plug these into another motherboard and get the data off of the drives? I have heard that each RAID is different and if I get a new mobo with a different onboard Raid it will not read these drives I have. I have most of the data backed up but want to get some important things off of the drives that was not backed.

I don't think i will use RAID anymore, I will just have 2 hard drives and synchronize them so that way i can easily take the drive and plug it into any other PC and access the files.

 

[Madwand1]

1. You can generally put the drives in another board with the same RAID chipset and have it recognized.

2. RAID 1 drives can typically pass for ordinary non-RAIDed drives, so you might not even need a matching RAID controller in this case.

 

[JimKiler]

That makes me happy, I should have tried moving one of the drives from the RAID SATA plugs to the non RAID SATA plugs before my board died. The mobo had Silicon Images 3114 chipset for RAID. I will have to check their website for info, if there is any.

 

[JimKiler]

Here is what wikipedia has to say about software RAID.

The disk formats on different RAID controllers are not necessarily compatible, so that it may not be possible to read a RAID on different hardware. Consequently a non-disk hardware failure may require using identical hardware, or a data backup, to recover the data. Software RAID however, such as implemented in the Linux kernel, alleviates this concern, as the setup is not hardware dependent, but runs on ordinary disk controllers. Additionally, Software RAID1 disks can be read like normal disks, so no RAID system is required to retrieve the data. Data recovery firms typically have a very hard time recovering data from RAID drives.

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you had your disks plugged into the SI3114-based RAID ports, then just pick up a 3114-based PCI SATA RAID controller, install the drivers, and then plug in the drives, and they should be recognized.
link

 

[JimKiler]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
If you had your disks plugged into the SI3114-based RAID ports, then just pick up a 3114-based PCI SATA RAID controller, install the drivers, and then plug in the drives, and they should be recognized.
link

Thanks Larry, turns out a co workers has the same mobo so I can just use his PC and get the data, I am done with RAID since it is not as redundant as I originally thought.

They need a universal RAID standard that way all RAID drives can be read by all RAID controllers. I don't care to use RAID again only to have a card/mobo die a second time.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: JimKiler
I am done with RAID since it is not as redundant as I originally thought.

A RAID 1 array is designed to protect against HD death but not controller demise.

 

[JimKiler]

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: JimKiler
I am done with RAID since it is not as redundant as I originally thought.

A RAID 1 array is designed to protect against HD death but not controller demise.

I am not going to RAID 10 if that is what you are implying

 

[Nothinman]

They need a universal RAID standard that way all RAID drives can be read by all RAID controllers.

That's one reason why I prefer software RAID, you don't have to worry about the controller at all.

 

[JimKiler]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

They need a universal RAID standard that way all RAID drives can be read by all RAID controllers.

That's one reason why I prefer software RAID, you don't have to worry about the controller at all.

is that true for Raid 5 as well?

 

[Nothinman]

is that true for Raid 5 as well?

Yea, all levels of software RAID are completely hardaware independent. Most of my experience is with Linux software RAID which just works as long as all of the drives are accesible in the system. It doesn't matter how they're hooked up, it'll find them and assemble the array automatically on bootup. Well there's a few gotchas here and there but usually it just works. I'm not sure of all of the caveats of using Windows software RAID other than you need to run some version of Server for redundant levels of RAID and there's some work to reimport foreign arrays.

 

[MerlinRML]

Originally posted by: JimKiler
They need a universal RAID standard that way all RAID drives can be read by all RAID controllers. I don't care to use RAID again only to have a card/mobo die a second time.

This would be really, really useful as a RAID user. Unfortunately, if I were company X there's no way I'm going to support you if you want to move away to company Y's controller, and I'm not going to support you if you're coming from company Z's controller all that much other than to say just switch to my controller and reinstall from scratch cause it's better-er. So you're still screwed.

You might google for RAID2RAID. It's a really interesting sounding tool that attempts to translate RAID metadata, which I can make no claim to have used or tried. It just sounds really interesting. I'm keen on knowing more about it, but I haven't had the opportunity to play with it. Maybe someone else has...

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Yea, all levels of software RAID are completely hardaware independent. Most of my experience is with Linux software RAID which just works as long as all of the drives are accesible in the system. It doesn't matter how they're hooked up, it'll find them and assemble the array automatically on bootup. Well there's a few gotchas here and there but usually it just works. I'm not sure of all of the caveats of using Windows software RAID other than you need to run some version of Server for redundant levels of RAID and there's some work to reimport foreign arrays.

I'd agree with Nothinman here. If you've sworn off RAID controllers, software RAID is a pretty decent solution. Windows RAID 5 was abysmally slow in my experience, but it does provide redundancy in the event of a disk failure. Software RAID problems are the same as hardware RAID problems, just replace hardware controller with your OS for any problem you could possibly imagine (i.e. "If my controller fails, my disks could be corrupted" becomes "If my OS fails, my disks could be corrupted.")

 

[Nothinman]

Windows RAID 5 was abysmally slow in my experience, but it does provide redundancy in the event of a disk failure.

I haven't benchmarked it myself but I can't see why it would be that bad unless you've got an extremely CPU bound server or need extremely high wright speeds for something.

Software RAID problems are the same as hardware RAID problems, just replace hardware controller with your OS for any problem you could possibly imagine (i.e. "If my controller fails, my disks could be corrupted" becomes "If my OS fails, my disks could be corrupted.")

You aren't replacing anything, there's one more layer (the software RAID driver in the OS) so technically there's slightly more chance for problems but I'd trust Linux or even Windows software RAID before one of the drivers for those cheapo onboard controllers.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: JimKiler

Originally posted by: Blain

Originally posted by: JimKiler
I am done with RAID since it is not as redundant as I originally thought.

A RAID 1 array is designed to protect against HD death but not controller demise.

I am not going to RAID 10 if that is what you are implying

Not at all.

 

[JimKiler]

Originally posted by: MerlinRML

Originally posted by: JimKiler
They need a universal RAID standard that way all RAID drives can be read by all RAID controllers. I don't care to use RAID again only to have a card/mobo die a second time.

This would be really, really useful as a RAID user. Unfortunately, if I were company X there's no way I'm going to support you if you want to move away to company Y's controller, and I'm not going to support you if you're coming from company Z's controller all that much other than to say just switch to my controller and reinstall from scratch cause it's better-er. So you're still screwed.

You might google for RAID2RAID. It's a really interesting sounding tool that attempts to translate RAID metadata, which I can make no claim to have used or tried. It just sounds really interesting. I'm keen on knowing more about it, but I haven't had the opportunity to play with it. Maybe someone else has...

an open standard would only work if a new standard was created by the forum members then all new cards & software could adhere to it for interoperability.

 

[Blain]

Originally posted by: JimKiler
an open standard would only work if
a new standard was created by the forum members then all new cards & software could adhere to it for interoperability.

???? :shocked: ????