Rebuild - What Can Go Wrong?

[will101]

My ASUS M2N32 SLI Deluxe motherboard seemed to have died so I bought an M4A79XTD Evo to replace it along with some nice DDR3 RAM and an interim CPU until the 95W Phenom 965 BE comes out.

The main thing I'm hoping to avoid is losing my Raid 0 array because, ummm, I didn't back it up.

So what's the likelihood of the new mobo detecting the raid 0 array and, assuming it gets that far, windows 7 (x64) not throwing a fit when it finds it's not based on the same mobo?!

Any useful tips on how to proceed?

[circuitmonkey]

I tried swapping a x38 for a x48 under xp last year with a raid-1 storage array (not OS), It booted ok, and even got to windows, but I had to phone microsoft to convince them that I wasn't running the same license on two separate machines. that array came up fine though. hopefully it shouldn't be too hard for you either.

[Zak33]

My ASUS M2N32 SLI Deluxe motherboard seemed to have died so I bought an M4A79XTD Evo to replace it along with some nice DDR3 RAM and an interim CPU until the 95W Phenom 965 BE comes out.

The main thing I'm hoping to avoid is losing my Raid 0 array because, ummm, I didn't back it up.

So what's the likelihood of the new mobo detecting the raid 0 array and, assuming it gets that far, windows 7 (x64) not throwing a fit when it finds it's not based on the same mobo?!

Any useful tips on how to proceed?

my guess... no hope. None at all.

RAID loves it's controller and it's respective drivers.... and without them... nah. I'd bet a quid it'll not work.

[Pob255]

Was your OS on the raid? or was that on a seperate drive?
if the OS was seperate then you should be able to get back into windows and recover the raid, in theory anyway.

[nimbu]

Depends on the controller the array was setup on initially.

At a guess and this is very very speculative, you will have either an array setup on either the built in NVIDIA chipset or a silicon image from the additional controller that is sometimes supplied. (Could be another but chances are its SI).

If its Nvidia you will not be able to just plug into your new mobo and see it. Option then is to take the drives to another Nvidia based board and there may be a slim chance you will be able to see the array.

If its a SI controller, you have a grreater chance of getting your data but requires a little more jiggery pokery. If your new board has a SI controller, again you may be able to detect the array when plugging into that. If not you may be able to source a PCI SI controller, but you must pay attention to the chipset of the controller. Its very common that the onboard controllers on your original board will be either a 3112R or a 3114R (I think thats the model but you will need to check). If you can source a suitable controller again you may be able to plugin and detect your array.

Hope that helps. and yess I have had this problem myself, I did get back to my data eventually!

[will101]

Thanks for the replies fellas. You included Zak

I only got as far as removing the old mobo and vacuuming the empty case last night - my PSU made a nice blue-white flash accompanied by a pop when I connected it to the mains & powered it up with the PSU tester. I was suspicious about it anyway so now it's added to the mobo RMA. Thanks Scan!

Nimbu - My original board had:

NVIDIA nForce® 590 SLI™ MCP supports:
* 1 x Ultra DMA 133/100/66/33
* 6 x Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s
* NVIDIA MediaShield™ RAID supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5 and JBOD span cross Serial ATA drives.

I have access to a board with an nforce 430 chipset that might be more likely to produce a positive result than the ATI SB750 on the replacement mobo I bought.

Of course I could wait for ASUS to return my repaired mobo but that would require patience while it gets shipped to Holland, repaired, and sent back!

Edit:

The raid array was set up in the F10 raid environment before OS load.

The OS is on the raid array...

[nimbu]

Hmm,

I went from an nforce 4 ultra to a bog standard nforce 4 and managed to get back to my data however I'm not sure about going from 4 to 5.

At the end of the day all depends on how valuable the data is to you. If it is wait for your board to come back. If its not then......

Oh side note, I would reinstall windows rather then try and take over your current install.

[will101]

I've bought a new HDD which I'll use till my original mobo comes back. I'd be tempted to see if my new board could detect the raid array but there's irreplaceable personal files on there so if there's ANY chance just connecting them and going into the raid setup environment will modify them in any way I'll just wait.

On a plus note; my Athlon x3 425 liberated from my HTPC unlocks to a quad core on my new mobo

[Biscuit]

Never store irreplaceable personal files on a RAID 0 setup unless they have an automatic backup. i know thats not a lot of help but its a lesson learned as there is only an extremely slim chance of them continuing to work under a differenct controller.

This is a good reminder for me actually, i could do with backing up my steam games.

[nimbu]

Sounds good. Let us know how you get on.

[peterb]

If the data is irreplacebale, you need to act with extreme care, because tinkering can make a bad situation worse.

You should get two replacement disks and clone the two raid disks to them - that is a bit by bit image. You then put the originals away and work on the images. If you make a mistake, you can re-image and start again. (Ideally you should take two images - and then don't touch the originals again, but that is taking things a bit far - unless the data is extremely valuable.)

There is software that claims to be able to detect raid signatures and allow you to recover the array

www.runtime.org - have a look for their RAID software.

I have used some of their other products and they worked as claimed, but I haven't tried the RAID recovery software or service.