RAID Controller Interoperability

[silverfox122]

Howdy folks. Been a long time member over at BBr (don't boo, I'm really a nice guy!), but they're having some technical issues at the moment, and I need a question answered, so I thought I'd try our friends over here at Anandtech.

I've had some issues with power supplies over the last while. I burned up a 550 watt ps (turns out I was loading it at about 560, 600 peak), replaced it with an 800 watt unit that went flakey after 3 months (currently at the factory for warranty). I bought a generic 600 watt ps to tide me over until my OCZ 800 gets back. Plugged it in and my system won't post. I fear that the flakey OCZ may have fried my MB. I've been too busy to tear it down to do any testing to find out for sure, but before I start I wanted to know something about RAID arrays.

IF (god I hope not) my mobo is shot (I won't be able to find another similar one) will I be able to move my RAID arrays to another RAID controller on a new MOBO and have the arrays recognized and used? Will I be able to simply plug the existing array into another controller and be able to access the data, with the new controller recognizing the existing array? Intuition tells me not a chance, but I thought I'd ask some experts.

Any information you can share would be greatly appreciated!

Mike

ps. the mobo is an older gigabyte s939 board, with an NVidia SATA raid controller and a Silicone Image SATA RAID controller

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

I honestly have no experience with doing RAID on integrated (onboard motherboard) controllers. From what I understand, you have to have everything the same--controller, drivers, and firmware--to migrate arrays over to new hardware. This is why everyone, including RAID users, should backup their data.

Your situation with killing PSUs sounds like what I was in a while back. I had 8 hard drives on a Promise controller in a dual Xeon machine, and I was killing Enermax PSUs like crazy. After losing a RAID 5 array, I went to dual PSUs (600w + 500w) with an UPS, and that all seemed to fix it. I think you should definitely get an UPS in case you have unclean power going to the machine and see if that helps your situation.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: silverfox122
IF (god I hope not) my mobo is shot (I won't be able to find another similar one) will I be able to move my RAID arrays to another RAID controller on a new MOBO and have the arrays recognized and used? Will I be able to simply plug the existing array into another controller and be able to access the data, with the new controller recognizing the existing array? Intuition tells me not a chance, but I thought I'd ask some experts.

Any information you can share would be greatly appreciated!

Mike

ps. the mobo is an older gigabyte s939 board, with an NVidia SATA raid controller and a Silicone Image SATA RAID controller

1. This depends entirely on the specific RAID controllers. Typically, you can do this with identical controllers and with future backwards-compatible controllers within the RAID controller family and feature set. E.g. if you have a failed Intel RAID ICH8R, you would be able to recover using an ICH8R or ICH9R. Similarly for nVIDIA controllers. Of course, if for example your old controller supports RAID 5 and your new one doesn't, then this might not work. These are rough guidelines. RAID is not a standard, so a RAID vendor is free to maintain and break compatibility (intentionally or otherwise) wherever it suits them.

2. The recovery is usually done by enabling the RAID feature at the BIOS level, but NOT redefining the array using the BIOS. Redefining or recreating the array often means losing the existing array, which is of course not what you want. So you should enable, re-boot, confirm recognition, fix the boot order if necessary. If recognition isn't working, try re-checking the settings, reordering the connections, etc. Redefine only as a last resort, and then only if you have some indication from the chipset's support that that's the right thing to do in this case.

3. After that, you may have to deal with the OS. If you have to reinstall the OS, then you may have to provide the RAID drivers during the installation phase. This part is easier if you don't have the OS on the array (which is one reason for discouraging installing the OS on RAID), where you can simply install the drivers within the OS.

4. Obviously this gets harder if you're using both RAID controllers for RAID arrays, as you have to find a replacement board with two matching controllers.

5. Theory only goes so far here, as this is a very practical question. The next steps would be find out if the MB is actually blown, and to try to find replacements, etc.

 

[silverfox122]

Thanks fellas. Chokobo: I've been on UPS power for years, so I don't think it's dirty power. Madwand: thanks for the thoughts. I'll be pulling the mobo Monday when I get some time off, and I'll tear it down to basics and see if I can get it to POST. If I do find that it's now a pretty green and spikey paper weight, I'll start looking for a mobo with those two RAID controllers. Don't like my chances.....

Thanks again fellas for the prompt responses!

Mike

 

[silverfox122]

Just for the sake of follow up, I've had some success. Turns out the mobo was fried (bunch of bad capacitors, 5 of them popped) and some heat damage on the back side.

The RAID array I was using to back up my main array was running on a Silicone Image 3114 chip, the wifes computer has a Silicone Image 3112 that isn't being used (both SATA, btw) I figured I'd give it a try, worst that could happen is the controller wouldn't see the array on the disks. So I plugged in both the drives, being careful to maintain the master/master relationship. Booted up the computer and entered the RAID config utility during boot. Both drives appear, and the stripe array shows as intact and healthy. I continued booting up the machine, and thar she blows! An intact RAID array with all my backed up data.

I haven't been able to try this with the main array yet, It was built on an NVidia Nforce 4 RAID controller, and the replacement board is an Nvidia 750i SLi chipset. I'll keep you posted, just in case anyone is actually reading any of this.

 

[silverfox122]

Well, installed the new mobo (different proc, mem as well), hooked up the orphaned RAID array, lo and behold, it appears as a healthy array in the NVidia RAID manager. Now the hard part, trying to get the OS back up. This required a repair install of the OS (winXP Pro), some jiggery pokery with drivers, and I'm back to my desktop with a healthy RAID 0 and all my settings and programs intact (!). I pretty pleased with myself, truth be told.

Next up is to do a fresh back up (my last one is over a month old), then wipe the OS and do a clean install from the ground up to get rid of all the driver trash that I'm sure is hanging around waiting to bite me when it's most inconvenient.

Thanks for the push in the right direction fellas, it's greatly appreciated!

 

[jdkick]

Glad it worked out. I had come across this a while ago:

http://www.tomshardware.com/re...ON-ADVENTURE,1640.html

 

[SolMiester]

Originally posted by: silverfox122
Howdy folks. Been a long time member over at BBr (don't boo, I'm really a nice guy!), but they're having some technical issues at the moment, and I need a question answered, so I thought I'd try our friends over here at Anandtech.

I've had some issues with power supplies over the last while. I burned up a 550 watt ps (turns out I was loading it at about 560, 600 peak), replaced it with an 800 watt unit that went flakey after 3 months (currently at the factory for warranty). I bought a generic 600 watt ps to tide me over until my OCZ 800 gets back. Plugged it in and my system won't post. I fear that the flakey OCZ may have fried my MB. I've been too busy to tear it down to do any testing to find out for sure, but before I start I wanted to know something about RAID arrays.

IF (god I hope not) my mobo is shot (I won't be able to find another similar one) will I be able to move my RAID arrays to another RAID controller on a new MOBO and have the arrays recognized and used? Will I be able to simply plug the existing array into another controller and be able to access the data, with the new controller recognizing the existing array? Intuition tells me not a chance, but I thought I'd ask some experts.

Any information you can share would be greatly appreciated!

Mike

ps. the mobo is an older gigabyte s939 board, with an NVidia SATA raid controller and a Silicone Image SATA RAID controller

Sounds like the board in my sig:....I was under the impression that Raid array info is stored on the drives themselves and not the controller, therefore is a perfect world, if you swap the drives in the same order to another like controller, it should read the array information for you....