broken sata connector and a couple of general sata questions!

[gavin]

Hi guys,

I somehow managed to break the connector for the data cable on the back
of one of my SATA drives :-( apparently its quite a common problem but
I have yet to read about any decent remedies....

I was quite fortunate in that I managed to wedge the broken bit of
plastic into the cable connector and get it working again - should be
fine as long as I dont kick my PC too much

So my question: I have two SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration and
was wondering - if I wanted to replace one drive is there any way I can
back an image of it onto an old IDE drive then restore it to the new
SATA drive? Its obviously possible with a normal drive but as this one
is half of the RAID 0 set I was curious what I would "see" on the drive
when it was connected on its own and if indeed I could mirror its
contents.

Also, what happens in XP if one of your two RAID 0 disk gets
disconnected? I know SATA drives are hot swappable but would the system
just die since the set appears as one disk to windows?

cheers guys for any info!

Gav

 

[Stephen]

Hi guys,

I somehow managed to break the connector for the data cable on the back
of one of my SATA drives :-( apparently its quite a common problem but
I have yet to read about any decent remedies....

I was quite fortunate in that I managed to wedge the broken bit of
plastic into the cable connector and get it working again - should be
fine as long as I dont kick my PC too much

So my question: I have two SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration and
was wondering - if I wanted to replace one drive is there any way I can
back an image of it onto an old IDE drive then restore it to the new
SATA drive? Its obviously possible with a normal drive but as this one
is half of the RAID 0 set I was curious what I would "see" on the drive
when it was connected on its own and if indeed I could mirror its
contents.

Also, what happens in XP if one of your two RAID 0 disk gets
disconnected? I know SATA drives are hot swappable but would the system
just die since the set appears as one disk to windows?

With RAID 0, you lose all your data that isn't backed up. If it's
your boot drive, XP will no longer boot.

Stephen
--

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi guys,

I somehow managed to break the connector for the data cable on the
back of one of my SATA drives :-( apparently its quite a common
problem but I have yet to read about any decent remedies....

I was quite fortunate in that I managed to wedge the broken bit of
plastic into the cable connector and get it working again - should be
fine as long as I dont kick my PC too much

So my question: I have two SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration and
was wondering - if I wanted to replace one drive is there any way I
can back an image of it onto an old IDE drive then restore it to the
new SATA drive? Its obviously possible with a normal drive but as
this one is half of the RAID 0 set I was curious what I would "see"
on the drive when it was connected on its own and if indeed I could
mirror its contents.

Just image the complete raid array, both drives, replace the drive
you want to replace and restore the complete raid array back to
the pair again, now one older and one newer hard drive.

Also, what happens in XP if one of your two RAID 0 disk gets
disconnected? I know SATA drives are hot swappable but would
the system just die since the set appears as one disk to windows?

Yes, with one drive gone, the other drive is unusable by
XP because half of its on the drive thats no longer there.

 

[Mitochondrion]

About the 1 of 2 disconnect problem, it is likely that any open
handles held by windows to files will be lost, Buffers will not be
flushed to disk, and the last filesystem operation will not succeed,
however; As far as completely corrupting your FS...NOPE, windows
would detect the missing disc and the OS Kernel would issue the HLT
instruction to your CPU to prevent further damage to the system..



As far as backing op 1 of 2 RAID-0 drives...I wouldn't reccommend
trying with standard backup tools, google it and you will see that
there are special tools available for backing up RAID arrays that are
pretty much guaranteed to work for you

 

[gavin]

About the 1 of 2 disconnect problem, it is likely that any open
handles held by windows to files will be lost, Buffers will not be
flushed to disk, and the last filesystem operation will not succeed,
however; As far as completely corrupting your FS...NOPE, windows
would detect the missing disc and the OS Kernel would issue the HLT
instruction to your CPU to prevent further damage to the system..



As far as backing op 1 of 2 RAID-0 drives...I wouldn't reccommend
trying with standard backup tools, google it and you will see that
there are special tools available for backing up RAID arrays that are
pretty much guaranteed to work for you

Awsome thanks for the replies guys! The thing is still working and I
have made a backup so I think I will just leave it and see how it
lasts.

Another option (as I have only 2 SATA connectors on my mobo) is that I
might get a raptor HDD and a USB connector and mirrror my system onto
that then stick that in as my main drive.... I tihnk I wont lose much
speed giving up the RAID 0 for a Raptor.

 

[Mitochondrion]

The Idea of backing up the whole array is VERY safe alternative, but I
think the real issue here is not complete loss of the array but rather
the defective disk only, yes 1/2 disks from a RAID array wuold not be
usable on it's own. However, restored to a new Disk (Byte for Byte) A
backup of the entire array is not required and it is more efficient to
back up just the defective disk.

Follow your gut...If it was MY machine I would upgrade both disks and
copy the entire array, because RAID works better on IDENTICAL disks
ie (model size, revision even)