Question Can I move a RAID array to another computer or VirtualBox?

[amandaville]

I have two Western Digital Internal Hard Drives from an old Windows computer. They were configured as a RAID 0 pair using the built-in RAID capability of the motherboard. I seem to recall the built-in RAID controller being Intel, but it was quite a while ago and I could be mistaken. The motherboard died long ago but now I want to take on the project of retrieving the data on the drives. What is the easiest way?

I thought I would create a VHD/VDI image of each of the drives and put them in a VirtualBox VM, but I don't know if it's possible to configure VirtualBox to pair the two drives in RAID 0 to read the data they contain. Or is it possible to connect them both with SATA-to-USB adapters to my current computer and recreate the RAID array in software? I don't have any SATA connections available on my current computer.

I guess my biggest question is... How do I tell the computer (whether hardware or VM), that they are a RAID pair and rebuild the array without the original motherboard? The inner workings of RAID have always been a bit of a mystery to me. I'm really hoping that I can simply install a package/software then point to the two drives and have my data available, but I'm guessing it's not going to be that easy. It would be a bonus if I can do it all in Linux since I haven't used Windows in nearly a decade, but that's why I thought a Windows VM might be an option

 

[Grobe]

First : Try to remember if you did actually used hardware raid, or software raid (i.e. dynamic disk in windows). It will help if you can confirm that.

If your raid setup was done by the SATA controller itself, that is a problem.
- Before any elaboration I have to ask if you really haven't made any backup, since raid0 is very prone to failure (you lost all data if just one drive goes bad) ?

The problem about hardware raid is that the raid controller probably have a different way of setting up the raid, compared to a set of disk that have being used in soft raid. That is among other things - for HW raid to be functional, you don't need any headers or bits written to the hdd because the settings are stored in bios or sata controller - so i bet no marker is written to any of the hdd to make any OS detect that they have being used in a hardware raid set.

Your best bet I guess is to hope there are some spechialized software out there that may recover from disks that have being part of a raid setup before.

Or possibly a company that have spechialized in data recovery - that use to be very expensive.

 

[mdd1963]

One of the huge disadvantages of MB raid controllers and RAID 0 or 5; when the MB fails, your data is essentially gone until you acquire an essentially identical mainboard. You most certainly are not going to be able to hook it up to Virtual Box, etc., or an actual hypervisor, and simply tell it 'RAID 0' and hope to get access to the data....

If the data is needed, best to start your search for a like mainboard....

 

[popatim]

Going from Intel to Intel often works. Same for AMD.
It definitely wont work going from one to the other...

 

[Grobe]

True.

Now - I admit not have trying this in practice despite having a couple of MB raid setup:
I'd bet that the order of the drives (drive1 connected to sata1, same for drive2 and sata2) - if swapped - would not work (or get any valid data) if connected to same MB model.

But, as I said I cannot say for sure this assumption is correct because I have never tested it.

 

[popatim]

Order doesn't matter either. Their configuration info is written on the disks themselves.
They just need to be connected to the same controller. Some motherbds have more then one storage controller, such as AsMedia, and you can't connect one drive to that and the other to an Intel Sata port