Moving spanned array to a new system

[aaroninwv]

I have two 200gb Seagate HDs on a Promise EIDE controller in a spanned array (I think that is the right term, they are setup as one 400gb disk, and it is not a RAID array). I used Windows XP's disk management tool to make the array.

I bought a new motherboard, and I'm going to need to format my system. When I plug the two disks in, are they going to be recognized correctly? Is there a way to avoid losing 400gbs of data (I don't have anywhere to back it up)? Thanks for the help!

 

[aaroninwv]

Also, I have them (the 2 drives) each as a master on their own cable. If I put them both on the same cable (slave/master) would that mess up the array?

 

[dmroeder]

Ok man, I don't know too much about your setup, but I do know that Windows XP hates major hardware changes. At one time I had a single IDE HD in my system and changed out my MB and guess what... No boot. What I ended up doing was a repair from my windows Disk and that did the trick. What I don't know is what is going to happen with your setup. I know it will be a pain in the arse though. Sorry that this doesn't help, but I thought I'd warn you that it might be rough.

Dustin

 

[Codesmith]

You can't move windows to a new motherboard unless its nearly identical to the old one.

Windows should automatically detect the dynamic array. It shouldn't matter what controller they are on.

 

[folken]

I think that will most definatly break the span. I assume that breaking it will result in dataloss but I'm not 100% sure. It seems like it wouldn't dump the data because in a span when one drive fills up data just spills over to the other drive. I guess even in that situation it is possible that you would loose any files that are right on the split between the 2 drives.

With any sort of hard drive array made in windows you can probably assume the worst, lol.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[aaroninwv]

Is there a way to break the array without reformatting, or moving all of the data.... stupid windows.

 

[folken]

I think you are going to have to pray that codesmith is right about the dynamic arrays

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>