Swapping motherboards, questions

[mcurphy]

My mobo in my P4 rig recently crapped out on me. After hours of searching to find an exact replacement, I can't find one anywhere available on the net. So I have a found a similar mobo from Asus that I am considering using.

Here's the question and my main concern, I have two 30GB hdd's set up in a RAID 0 array, and I am concerended with losing the data I have stored on them. Will I be able to hook everything up to the new mobo and be able to retrieve this data without a hitch? Will the PC boot up as though nothing has changed...will I need to boot from my WINXP disc?

More info: the currently fried mobo is a GigaByte SINXP1394, I would like to replace it with an Asus P4C800. I orginally had a 120GB hdd that was partitioned as both my C drive and D drive. I also had two 30GB hdd's set up in RAID 0 as my E drive. I am hoping to hook up everything as it was originally, save the mobo, and be good to go.

Are there any other concerns I need to be aware of? This is the first time I have had to replace a faulty mobo, so I had really hoped to find an exact replacement to avoid any "issues" that may come up with the swap. Since I can not find an exact replacement anywhere, I have to resort to a mobo with similar features.

Thanks much for any insight or help you can provide!

Cheers,

Mcurphy

 

[Steven the Leech]

I think the gigabyte raid has a sil?? chipset and the asus intel ICH5r, if the raid controllers are the same chipset then theoretically it should work, but with the chipsets being different, I doubt you could boot into windows. If windows setup sees the raid partition you could also do a repair install of windows. F6 and install the new raid controller

 

[mcurphy]

Yes, that is something I didn't think about. Will the chipsets be a concern?

The P4C800-E uses these chipsets:
Northbridge:Intel 82875P MCH
Southbridge: Intel 82801ER ICH5R
RAID Controller: Intel ICH5R Southbridge Promise PDC20378 Controller

The SINXP1394 uses these chipsets:
Northbridge: SiS 655
Southbridge: SiS 963
RAID Controller: ITE GigaRAID 8212F Controller

Ugh! lol. Will this be a big kink in my master plan of smooth transition? Does the chipset make a big difference?

I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but I should also mention that the RAID drives are IDE and not SATA, although both mobo's offer SATA RAID as well.

 

[Steven the Leech]

I misread, You dont have your OS on the raid 0 drives, do you. [Will be Promise on the PDC20378 Controller on the new board. You will just have to try it and see if it will work. If it doesnt do a repair install, after windows installs it will recognize the raid drives after you install drivers for it. Shouldnt be a big deal either way. I would do a clean install if it were mine, but for me it is easy as i keep regular backups of all data i want to keep.

 

[mcurphy]

That's my big problem...unfortunately I have had a major lapse in my backups 🙁

So I guess I will have to dive in and try it out like you said. I am hoping that because my OS is not on the RAID drives, they will be easily recognized and configured with all of my data intact.

I also had some improtant data on my 120GB, on a partition. Will I be able to format only the C drive which contains the OS and some easily replaced programs, and be able to read the partition / D drive without a problem? I'd rather not partition the entire 120GB if at all possible so I can reserve the partition.

Sorry for so many questions, I just want to make sure I am making the right decision before I risk losing this data.

 

[Steven the Leech]

Will I be able to format only the C drive which contains the OS and some easily replaced programs, and be able to read the partition / D drive without a problem?

Shouldn't be a problem to format C; and re install windows, will not affect D: drive whatsoever, you may have to go to disk management and change your drive letters to your liking, if you do a re install, after you get window set up.

If you have programs installed on the D: drive they may [probably will not] not work properly.

 

[mcurphy]

I opened up the new issue of Maximum PC today and low and behold the first reader's question in there was to resolve an issue almost identical to mine! They had some great tips on replacing a mobo and saving RAID data, many of the tips were right in line with the advice you have given me. It looks like my best bet will be in fact to go with the same raid controller since I won't be able to replace the mobo with an identical version. I have some research to do now to find out which P4 533 boards have the ITE raid controller that mine has.



Thanks for all the great help, it was greatly appreciated!

 

[Steven the Leech]

I don't think it will be so important t find the MB with the same Raid controller as it is to make sure that your new motherboards raid controller supports the same stripe that you have your current raid ide drives set to. The OS should recognize the drive perfectly fine after you install the drivers for the Raid controller, with no changes to the data on the mentioned raid drives. I have personally switced drives between different controllers sil/ICHR that had drivers installed in the OS before swapping controllers actually a gigabyte 8knxp on sata controllers