raid question

  • Thread starter Thread starter chris
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chris

i have 2 x 80 GB drives on a raid array working fine - i am just going to
upgrade my system and the new board has raid on it.

my queestion is - will the new raid controller detect and setup the array
correctly or not ??

am i likely to have problems or should just connecting the drives to the new
raid controller just work straight up???
 
chris said:
i have 2 x 80 GB drives on a raid array working fine - i am just going to
upgrade my system and the new board has raid on it.

my queestion is - will the new raid controller detect and setup the array
correctly or not ??

am i likely to have problems or should just connecting the drives to the
new raid controller just work straight up???
Click to expand...

You may be lucky and have the system work without any further effort other
than the hardware upgrade, but I'd say the odds are less than 1% that will
happen. As with any major upgrade, make sure you backup all inportant data
and have all your software install disks and their serial numbers available,
it's my bet you'll need to re-install from scratch.

When installing make sure you have the Raid drivers to hand on floppy disk
ready for install near the BEGINNING of Windows setup.

Crimson Liar
 
it really depends what kind of RAID you're talking about. if it's
RAID0 (striping), then your odds are much worse than if it's RAID1
(mirroring). personally, i think striping is the dumbest thing
possible, anyway, so perhaps it wouldn't be so bad for you to learn
that lesson on your own.

if it's a basic mirrored array, then just about any RAID controller
should have absolutely no problem with it.

if it's striped, if you can get it to work at all, you will need to
configure the stripe size (ie, 16kb, 32kb, whatever it may currently
be) to be the same in the new setup, as well as which is the "leading"
physical device. with these attributes properly configured, you have a
decent chance to succeed. but i wouldn't count on it - make backups.

if the drives are mirrored, i wouldn't even worry about backups. but
it can certainly never hurt.
 
i have 2 x 80 GB drives on a raid array working fine - i am just going to
upgrade my system and the new board has raid on it.

my queestion is - will the new raid controller detect and setup the array
correctly or not ??

am i likely to have problems or should just connecting the drives to the new
raid controller just work straight up???
Click to expand...


Generally it is best to post specifics, as the specifics
often matter.

If the new motherboard has same controller and (raid) bios
as the old controller, you should be able to move the
array. If it doesn't then you can't move the array unless
the drives are as single non-striped volumes, for example if
they're single-drive spans, not single-drive stripes.

If the drives will have valuable data on them it is good
not to depend on a motherboard raid controller, as the
motherboard is one of the more common failure point(s) in a
system. If you can find a PCI IDE controller card that also
supports the drives, you could then use the card instead or
have it available in another system should the (first) one
suffer downtime, the drives would be accessible on the
other, though that is something one might want to confirm as
working prior to significant data storage.

If the new board doesn't recognize the array immediately and
you "can't" lose the data on the drives, do NOT try to
configure them on the new board's raid configuration
(screen), they should be connected back to the known working
controller and copied off to backup (which is actually what
I'd suggest be done first, regardless of anticipated success
or failure, having a confirmed restorable backup of
anything important.).
 
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