Raid 1 motherboard failed - questions

[DelD]

I have a Raid 1 question. It appears that the motherboard (ASUS) failed on a computer that I have setup as a Raid 1.

I am not sure if the entire board as failed or what. We have been having problems with the board (Nic card failed, then wouldnt boot or shutdown) I will have to check it once I get back to the house. I have replaced the psu, which I thought for a second it fixed the problem as the computer booted right up, but once I shut it down it will not start again. So I am guessing the the motherboard is either going bad or has failed completely.

Can I buy another motherboard, put in the existing drives and still have the data once it boots up or will I have to reformat the drives?

Can I put either one of the drives in another computer and get the data off them?

I would very much like ot get the data off the drives before I go messing around changing out the MB, if there is anyway to do this please let me know.

THank you for your time.

Take care

Del D

 

[Zepper]

RAID 1 should be much safer than RAID 0 but you will still probably want to have your new controller be in the same chip family as your original mobo. I recommend to anyone who wants to experiment with IDE raid to get an add-on controller to set up your RAID. That way you can take your RAID array forward to any new system without worrying about compatibility.

I suggest you get a copy of the Ultimate Boot CD for DOS then you can hook up each drive separately as a standalone and boot off the CD to see if the drive is readable as a standalone - either drive should be standalone-capable as they should have identical formats and data. Booting off the CD prevents ANY writing to the HDDs and you don't want any writing to the drives until you are sure of them. Good luck.

.bh.

 

[DelD]

Update and a couple more questions.

The MB that failed is a A8N-E, I am fairly certain that is the MB as we have changed PS and now I do not get a power light on the board. Also, the drives are SATA drives not IDE. I tried to copy data from one of the drives to another drive but the folder with the data I need is password protected. Access is denied to that folder.

I currently have another MB from the A8N-E family a A8N-SLI Deluxe which I could reconfigure to take the 2 drives. I would rather not do that as I am just not that familiar with RAID setup and I may lose all of the data on the drives. So this leads to my first question...

Since these drives where setup in a RAID 0 format, could I put either one of the drives in another computer as the boot drive?

I would then be able to boot to windows, enter the password and copy all data to another drive. (I dont need the OS data, as I will build the system as a non raid setup once I have the data I need.)

If I try this and it doesnt work will the two drives still mirror if I try to both them back on another raid controller?

If the first question is a NO then is it possible to use the A8N-SLI Deluxe raid controller to get the data off these drives?

Both MB (A8N-E and A8N-SLI have the NVIDIA nForce 4 SLI Chipset, although the A8N-SLI also as a Silicon Image 3114R Raid controller)

Thanks for your help.

Take care

Del D

 

[DelD]

bump

 

[DelD]

bump for the Sunday crew

 

[ch33zw1z]

So is it RAID 0 or 1?

 

[DelD]

The original setup was a Raid 1 (mirrored drives). It will not be raid once I get the data off the drives, just getting the data is my problem at the moment.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Each drive should be seen by your OS when not installed in a RAID. If you plug them into the same model RAID controller, even on a different mobo, you can copy the RAID config to the controller from hard drives. Either way should give you access to your data.

 

[DelD]

I can see the drive from my OS, but I need to be able to boot from the drive. I have already put one of the drives in my computer, but the file I need to copy is access denied. Since the OS is password protected I cannot access the files I need to copy unless I boot form the drive and enter the password. (I did not see anyway to enter a password when just looking at the drive from my OS. (We are both running XP)

That is the reason I need to know if I can boot from one of the drives if they are not in a raid setup? I would rather do it this way has I am afraid I will screw up the drives setting them up as a raid on my system.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Try booting and see what happens. I don't know of a reason why you shouldn't be able to boot one drive at a time...but I've also never used the controller you had them on.

Like I said, the RAID configuration is stored on the drives that are part of that array. You should be able to plug them into the same controller on a different board and copy the config to the controller from the drives without losing the data. The only problem you MAY run into is if the new controller is at a different firmware level than the old one. Chances are you will be ok though.

 

[soydios]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a RAID 1 is completely transparent to the OS, thus you could plug in one of the drives and boot from it.

*NOTE*: get a second opinion on this, preferably from someone who knows more about RAID than I do.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: soydios
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a RAID 1 is completely transparent to the OS, thus you could plug in one of the drives and boot from it.

Whether or not a single drive of a RAID 1 array is visible to the OS depends on the RAID controller that set up the drive. A cheap Adaptec RAID controller writes mirrors where one drive can be pulled and just dumped into another system and be read. Mirrored drives created by other RAID controller cards may not be readable without special utilities. I believe that's the case with Nvidia onboard RAID chips.

 

[Captante]

You should be able to plug one or both of the RAID 1 drives into the RAID controller on the A8N-SLI because it uses the same chipset drivers .. just go into the BIOS (not the RAID setup menu) & specify the SATA channels you attached the drive(s) to as enabled for RAID, then when you boot up the array should show up in the RAID controller POST screen as healthy... I've done exactly this more then once.

You might want to try this with only one drive attached first to preserve data on the second in case somthing does go wrong, just ignore the warning that pops up saying "redundency has been lost" or somthing to that effect & press the key which continues the boot... if Windows loads right up your good to go... just shut down attach the 2ed drive.

 

[DelD]

Just a quick update.

Thank you all for the advice. I got the data off of the drives. I did try as was mentioned above to create a Raid 1 with just one of the drives, but the bios would not accept the configuration with just a single drive. Gave me an error and went back to the screen where u have to select the drives for the array.

I ended up getting the data by just booting off one of the drives. So it all worked out in the end.

I am not sure if I will create a raid setup again with these two drives and it might not be possible now that I have accessed one of them to remove data. I know though that if I have any problems I can come here for some helpful advice.

Thanks again to all who responded.

Take care,

Del

 

[ch33zw1z]

Good deal :thumbsup: not all are so lucky. I've seen customers that lose all their data even though it was just the controller that failed.

If you do choose to do a RAID array, try a PCI or PCIE adaptor instead. much easier to deal with.