Quick SATA drive question...

[Nick]

Right then, I've running a striped array (forget what RAID number it is).. My question is... If I unplug these two drives when I strip my system down for dusting and re-wiring (as I'll be doing shortly) will it make any odds if I plug them back into the mobo in different sockets to the ones they came out of?

To re-phrase... once the drives are striped as one mahoosive drive, does it matter if they get plugged back in differently to how they came out?

I guess another question would be... If I upgrade my mobo to an A64 system, would it matter then how the drives are plugged in, or do they just sort themselves out?

[BlueMagician]

It's RAID-0.

I don't think it will matter what controller ports you connect them back into, as long as the drives are ID'd correctly in BIOS.


On moving the array to different board - Unless I'm mistaken, there is no standard way that data is written to an array. One controller may not understand anothers data, ergo changing to a new board with a different manufacture of RAID controller on it, you are likely to break the array and lose data.
I may be wrong on this, and simply matching up the block size between the old and new boards may be all that's needed - but I've read that it's not that simple..


HTH,
S.

[Nick]

So it's prolly better to get hold of a couple of drives, slap them in the new machine and transfer the data across then... but then I'm stuck with my old drives on my old board still...

Bugger... unless I get a four SATA port board, I'm not going to get the info off these drives intact and then back onto the same two drives on a new board...

Burning the data to DVD is out as its 130 Gig atm.... that's a stupid amount of disks even if I use dual layer....

[nichomach]

I know it involves spending more money, but have you considered something like a USB2 or FW external hard disk? You could back up on to that, shift your existing drives, reformat them on the new RAID controller, restore your data etc, and have a useful backup device at the end. Dabs have got a 160GB Maxtor OneTouch for £91 inc., or a 200GB Lacie for £98. Me, having dealt with Lacie I'd go for the Maxtor.

[Mblaster]

Yeah, moving to a different RAID controller will break the array.

Instead of buying a separte external HDD you could get an external case for a HDD, although this would require a HDD to put in it Only £32 for a USB2 HDD case.

[nichomach]

Mblaster's option is a good one if you have, say, a spare 160GB IDE drive kicking around.