Access data on RAID0 HD from old computer?

rsugden

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Oct 30, 2009
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I have 2 hard drives from an old computer that went kaput. The were coupled as Raid0 with an AMD chipset on an MSI mobo. Now I have an Asus mobo with Intel chip set up. Is there anyway I can get some data off those old drives by hooking them up to new machine?
 

jetsamrover

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Oct 23, 2009
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Nope. Thats the risk you take on when you use raid 0. If something happens that data is gone forever. Its sometimes possible to recover some data with recovery software, but I doubt you will get much if anything.
 

rsugden

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SUB MESA IS MY NEW HERO!

By booting with Linux, I was easily able to view the contents on my RAID 0 drives, which were from another chipset entirely. (See my OP.)

I understood that I would not be able to boot up the old system in toto (given what I had done), but I did wonder about this idea that the data on the drives were totally inaccessible. In my case, there was not a question of damage or corrupt drives. Simply, that I had naively thought that I could transfer the drives from my previous system, which was an AMD CPU & MSI mobo, to my new Intel CPU/Asus mobo without a thought about compatibility or methods of coupling them.

However, though I have little knowledge, the idea that these drives (no matter how they are configured) are simply the same magnetic material in the same mechanism left me baffled as to how they were complete inaccessible through non-esoteric means, i.e., "data recovery methods."

Anyway, thank you, Sub Mesa for your knowledge of theory and practice and I hope your message becomes more well known. I know that I will pass it on.
 

rsugden

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Now that I have access to these RAID 0 disks (which were set using NVRAID/AMP chipset/MSI mobo/Vista), is there anyway to have them recognized by new set up (Intel/Asus mobo/Vista) without a standard reformating? (Which erases all the previous data, no?) When I access it with my current system, it asks if I want to format the drive, which is to be expected.
 

sub mesa

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Make sure you have a full backup, then connect to the new RAID system; it will not detect the disks as belonging to a RAID. Enter the RAID BIOS setup and create a RAID array using the exact same settings as it was originally created:
- RAID level
- stripesize
- disk order
(and offset but that's not really used)

If you're lucky, it works and you have access to your array without having to restore from backup. In other cases it will not work, likely because the disk order is wrong or the RAID engine uses a different offset or location of the metadata sector. In that case it might see a partition but the array is corrupted. You should be able to format it and restore the backup.

As this procedure comes with a risk, the Linux way of recovering RAIDs is very safe, as it allows to recover files without writing anything so its safe to try and usually works. :)
 

rsugden

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I cannot figure out what file is the raid file for my drive in the /dev directory for the mdadm package --detail command (where your example has sudo mdadm --detail /dev/md0 and md0, I assume, stands for the filename. There's nothing obvious immediately in /dev. I tried /dev/mapper/NVIDIA_dbjabbcb and /device/[the long ID number]. The message I got for both was does not appear to be a md disk. So, I don't know if this is a legit message or if I am just not using the proper file in the /dev.
 

cyberpet

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Jun 6, 2013
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I have the same problem as this but can't access SubMesa's post giving instructions on how to access raid data using linux, is it still around anywhere or can anyone help? A server died and I need to access the company data on the raid discs, have tried all the usual data recovery options but this is getting me nowhere. Thanks guys
 

cyberpet

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Sub Mesa, is this info still available somewhere?
 

bigwoofer

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Aug 14, 2013
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Sadly, the link is now broken but this problem has been solved :)