Putting RAID HDD's with a new motherboard

[Aguycalledhaney]

Hey folks:

I posted about a week ago asking for advice for new computer components and was amazed at all the great help I got! Well, I have all my new schtuff, and now I'm running into some trouble. Here's the story:

I went from an older ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard to an ECS A885GM-A2 motherboard. I also updated my RAM and graphics card but I don't think they apply to this situation. I have two Hitachi Deskstar 250GB HDD's. They came with my original computer as a STRIPE RAID 64k width 2. I have no idea what this means.

I set them up with my new motherboard, and was getting an "Error: Could not read disk. Cntrl-Alt-Delete to restart" and so on. After some trial-and-error in SETUP, I stumbled across the ability to set up a controller(?) and put the drives in a RAID-0 array. It said nothing about "64k" or "width 2".

I continue to get the same error, and when I switch the physical cables around I get "no bootable medium" or something of the sort. It's worth mentioning that before I bought new schtuff the computer would occasionally automatically run a chkdsk so I wouldn't be surprised if one of these drives is dying.

What should I do here? I'm more than happy to reformat both drives, get a fresh OS on there and get them out of whatever the hell RAID is, unless there's a simpler solution. Thanks!

 

[jsc]

There isn't. The problem with motherboard RAID is that it generally is not easily portable when changing motherboards.

If the data on the drives is valuable, use a third drive, internal or external, to back the contents up. Then reformat the drives. If you wish, reinstall them as RAID.

 

[Aguycalledhaney]

Oh I see, I didn't know different motherboards treated RAID differently. Makes sense now!

Would RAID be considered a good way to go? Is there something more "standard"?

 

[kitsunestarwind]

You can move raid arrays between the same Chipset types on motherboard, e.g 790FX, 890FX, 990FX that have the same controller type but say going from a Nvidia/Intel/AMD based board to a different type doesn't work, specially for Raid0/5/10

 

[WyomingKnott]

You can always look at this: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/196922-32-switching-storage-controllers-reinstalling-windows , but it's more reliable to backup the RAID data to an external drive, build the new system, and restore the data.

The key statement you made is " I'm more than happy to reformat both drives, get a fresh OS on there and get them out of whatever the hell RAID is, unless there's a simpler solution." RAID levels should be chosen to address a specific need. Otherwise, they are just introducing complication, reducing portability, and, in the case of RAID 0, reducing reliability.

Back up your data, build a new system, restore the data to one or more unRAIDed drives, and do frequent backups. Enjoy your new system.

 

[RetiredChief]

^ concur
Just one comment - I hope you did not have anything of importance on the drives. My gut feel is in your attemps to get it working you have distroyed the array - Very easy to do.

Just this week had a raid0 on an Old system (used IDE raid0 setup) get corrupted due to a failing CMOS battery).