Beemer wrote:
> "Paul" <> wrote in message news:gd951j$2hb$...
>> Beemer wrote:
>>> I have two SATA 500GB disks which previously were working with my failed
>>> ECS K8N
>>> SLI Extreme motherboard. It had two Raid controllers one was NForce4
>>> and
>>> the other a Sil controller. I cannot recall which one was being used
>>> but
>>> it was definately RAID 1.
>>>
>>> Now I have a Gigabyte GA EP45-SD3P motherboard whose chipset has the
>>> Intel
>>> Matrix Raid manager.
>>>
>>> Windows XP SP3 is being used but as previously the Windows disk is part
>>> of
>>> the Raid assembly.
>>>
>>> I connected the raid drives drives and changed the MB Bios (rev 8) to
>>> enable Intel RAID. After rebooting I was able to enter the Intel Raid
>>> manager by using Ctrl I.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately the "raid" pair is not now being recognised as a raid pair
>>> and also windows will not boot unless I disable Raid. It did offer the
>>> opportunity to "create a raid volume" but the manual is clear that this
>>> woudl have resulted in me losing everything on any new raid volume.
>>>
>>> There is an Intel "migrate" mode which says that the host drive will not
>>> lose data when a further drive is added to an "Intel RAID ready system".
>>> Once I try this the additional drive of the old raid pair will definately
>>> lose all of its data.
>>>
>>> I am hoping that someone might have gone through this same procedure and
>>> can
>>> confirm that I would not lose the data on the "host" drive while
>>> migrating?
>>>
>>> Unfortunately there might be too much data on the existing raid pair for
>>> me
>>> to temporarily store the data elsewhere.
>>>
>>> regards,
>>>
>>> Beemer
>>>
>> Tomshardware did some testing of a sort, and RAID volumes are not
>> generally transferable, between different company's chipsets. Going
>> from Nvidia to Nvidia might work. Going from Nvidia to Intel, the
>> metadata or reserved sector format written on the hard drive, should
>> be different.
>>
>> The physics involved should be simple (RAID 0 is just interleaved
>> blocks of data - one disk odd, the other even), but working out a
>> recovery scheme all on your own would be a daunting task. Either
>> buy recovery software, or get another hardware platform which will
>> allow you to gain access to the data (another Nvidia based board).
>> Then transfer the data to another volume, and use that for further
>> experiments on the new computer.
>>
>> RAID 1 would be slightly different, in that it is possible that
>> plugging a single RAID 1 disk, into a new motherboard, and then
>> doing a repair install with new disk driver via F6, may fix it.
>>
>> Paul
>>
> I can see the data on each drive if I keep raid switched off. Trouble is
> if the repair failed it might decide to format the drives!!!
>
> thanks,
>
> Beemer
>
So it is a RAID 1 array then. That is much simpler to fix.
I cannot guarantee this is sufficient, but if you boot a Linux LiveCD
and can click on and read the contents of the NTFS or FAT32 drive on
the Linux desktop, then that would suggest you can do a repair install
on it.
Other utility is TestDisk, but I wouldn't recommend using this
the first time, on anything important. This is a tool for another
time.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
Alternately, you can use my success formula -
When in doubt, buy a new drive and clone the old drive.
I've used this method for at least four hardware migrations, and
if I run into trouble, I can go back and clone the original drive
again. I go to a local shop, and buy a new 80GB drive, and just copy
from the old one. Companies like Seagate provide downloadable
software, for making copies to new hard drives. I use an old
copy of Partition Magic here, to do that kind of thing, but
the Seagate software would be free. The Seagate manual for
their software says "Powered by Acronis", so is Acronis
software underneath.
Good luck,
Paul
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