raid help

[polluxmr2]

I have two harddrives in raid 1. i am thinking about upgrading the mobo. however, the raid device powering the drives is built in to the mobo. Can i get away with hooking the drives up to a new mobo with raid 1 support or are those drives tied to that mobo ( or at least the particular built in raid card? )

[AMDave]

In theory you might get away with it if the chipset RAID controller on the new mobo is the same as the old one, but in practice you usually have to do a disk rebuild.

Check with the hardware vendor - they may have some procedure documents on this topic. There may be particular steps that you need to do to ensure success.

No matter what. Make a full backup with software that writes in a format that will allow you to recover data even if the new machine cannot use that software AND verify and test the backup before you start.

Make sure you have your original RAID Manager software on a bootable CD/DVD (test it before hand)

If you proceed you can try installing the drives in the same order [0 and 1] (take notes before you start). If the RAID Manager program sees the disks as a broken array then you can try a repair & that may get you through.

Otherwise, install one of the disks as a single drive and then go through the upgrade process again. At least you may be working again on one disk.

No matter what. Make a full backup with software that writes in a format that will allow you to recover data even if the new machine cannot use that software AND verify and test the backup before you start.
(I know I said it twice - that is deliberate)

[polluxmr2]

thats answers that. I dont want to risk losing the data contained on the disks. Looks i am going to have to get a new system or NAS device, move the data over then sell off the old stuff. i dont really have a way to backup 300 gigs of movies and mp3s ( all legal, of course. heh )

[Bender10]

If you are looking for a NAS device. I would give FreeNas a look. I am using it to Raid 1 a pair of disks. It's Free, and as long as your hardware supports the disk size you are using, it should werk ok.

I am just using it as a file server. But you may be able to play your movies/mp3's directly from the device. I'm not sure.

Take a look at it. There are some quirks, but as a straight file server, I have had no problems.

I am using version .684b

[NeoGen]

I dream with having one of these... :icon_rolleyes:
http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=12&pid=32

It would be sweet to stuff it with five 1Tb hard drives, running on RAID-5 mode... but it's waaaaay out of my budget.

[polluxmr2]

I dream with having one of these... :icon_rolleyes:
http://www.thecus.com/products_over.php?cid=12&pid=32

It would be sweet to stuff it with five 1Tb hard drives, running on RAID-5 mode... but it's waaaaay out of my budget.

thats what credit cards are for. buy now, pay forever.:icon_wink: