Adding old RAID 0 Hard drives to a new computer, not booting from it.

iloqin

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May 2, 2010
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Is this possible without losing the data?

I had a question. I have an old computer (pretty friggin old) that I used to run RAID 0 on it.

I wanted to pull some data from that old RAID 0 of 2 hard drives to my new computer. Old computer is obviously dead, but I do know the hard drives are still working. I don't want to boot from the old Hard drives, I just want to add it to my computer, pull some files off, and then take them out. But is it easy as just connecting both hard drives, in BIOS select those 2 for the array (like it once was), and hope when I get into windows it just reads off as a storage drive?
 

Wamphryi

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What Emerald has said is correct. As the drives are in RAID 0 you are dependent on the RAID Controller to access the drives. RAID 1 drives can be accessed as single drives. If your old and current controllers are both Intel for instance you might get away with it despite the disparity in system age. You can tell by plugging in the drives and seeing if they are recognised by the RAID BIOS at boot up. If they are all is good. If not then the moment you add them to an array you will lose the data. You would have so search out an identical controller to keep the data.