Questions bout raid ... need help

[blind_owl]

hi everybody
i just join here cuz something just came into my mind that drives me worry to death !
i recently bought 2*500gb maxtor hdds and set them up as raid 0 in bios ...
and as u already know when u gonna set the hdds as raid 0 the raid manager will tell u that all data in both drives will be lost .
my concern is what if with some accident i loose my bios settings and wanna tell the bios to set these two drives as raid0 again , will i lost my data ? or what if i want to change my mobo ? what will happen , is there a way to prevent it ? will SW raid be a different ?
i concern bout it cuz in lst 6 month i lost my bios setting twice ( my mobo is asus p5q ) , once in the middle of the bios update system crashed and i lost my bios and once my backup battery lost !
thnx ...

 

[wolf2]

Hello,
You should not have a problem with resetting the BIOS settings and having the system recognize them correctly. You will lose your data if you reset the Disks to Non-Raid, Delete the Array, or have some problems where the disks become non-readable due to a surface problem. Whenever I update my BIOS and restart, the settings are always reset to Non-Raid and Non-AHCI settings.

I then change the settings to the correct values and everything works fine. As for migrating the RAID to another machine, I believe that you can do that as long as the Chipsets are the same and the drivers are the same between the two Mobos. I am not sure about the procedure that you need to follow to recreate the array on the new machine, but I believe it should be similar to initially creating the Array volume in the first place.

You can think of it this way, the two drives are set into a RAID-0 array in BIOS and logically joined and booted after POST. Now, if the drives are removed from the Array in the BIOS and added later or moved to another machine, they should still work as long as you don't delete the information on these drives and install them in the same physical locations (SATA0, SATA1, etc).

My advice to you though is always backup your data! Its silly really, but a small investment in software like Genie BackupManager Pro and an external HD will go a long way to save you a lot of heart ache. Invest as much time in thinking through backups as you do in setting up RAIDs, it will pay off in the long run. I backup regularly, even with RAID1, Raid5, and now RAID10.

Good luck.

 

[nukemaster]

Toms did a test on migration. In general to go from one to another, Intel is best. The best option is a stand alone card as it will go to any system.

As for loss after a bios update, Just set the bios back to raid and you should be back in business.

 

[blind_owl]

thank u so much guys for replies , it cleared things out for me
i have so important data in there , so i m not gonna risk it may stay on migration or not ...
i already have a backup external 500g hdd , but as it s so slow (it only has the usb port) i do my backup everyweek , but now it seems i have to do it few times a day ! ...
thnx again for answers ...