RAID Controller Failure

[wcgrnway]

I recently had a drive in 2 drive RAID 0 die and take all 700 GB of data with it. I am considering rebuilding my machine and adding 1 or 2 drives to do either RAID 5 or RAID 0+1, or possibly just mirror the volumes independently.

I have a BFG 680i motherboard that uses the Mediashield software. I am reading in some places that if the RAID controller (in this case the mother board) dies, the data is lost even if the stripe data isn't damaged.

I'm trying to discover the veracity of this before I rebuild my machine. I'd rather not have two mirrored volumes as that will be an irritation, but I don't want to go through the hassle of totally reconstructing my data again. The security of RAID 5 or RAID 0+1 would be enough if I knew I wouldn't be hosed if the motherboard croaked. ((Yes, I know RAID != backup)) but backing up 700 Gigs ain't cheap.

Anyone know for sure or have experienced this scenario?

 

[lopri]

I'd suggest:

Single disk OS
Two disks for data, RAID1'ed

I can only say it's natural, that the more disks, the more functions in the controller you use, the more stress will be on disk controller.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: wcgrnway
((Yes, I know RAID != backup)) but backing up 700 Gigs ain't cheap.

It's never been cheaper. 750 GB drives aren't too far from the sweet spot of $/GB. If you drop the RAID idea and get one of these for external backup, and do backups, this will be more robust and portable.

RAID arrays should always be portable within the same chipset version and of course the same motherboard. Sometimes they're even portable between different chipset revisions of the same vendor. You need to enable RAID in the BIOS for the desired controller / ports, and perhaps connect them in the same order and adjust your boot order. Afterwards, the RAID BIOS should automatically recognize the array. You should not re-define / re-create the array -- doing so might wipe the old array. You would need to install the RAID drivers at the OS level. If you're booting off the array, this can be more troublesome when changing motherboards / chipsets. This is one of the reasons to not boot off a complex RAID array and instead leave the OS on a simple drive (or RAID 1, which is similar to a single drive).

Different RAID implementations can of course behave differently, as there are no standards in this area, but RAID recognition has been fine IME with nVIDIA RAID. E.g. I've moved a RAID 0 array from nForce 3 to nForce 430.

 

[wcgrnway]

Thanks Madwand, I was hoping to find someone that had tried to move the array (or had a board die). I think a NAS is in my future... this whole experience had been irritatingly painful despite the fact that my most important information was backed up.