RAID 0 and linux

[spring2012stats]

Hi,

I have a dead gigabyte motherboard with sb710 chipset and a gigantic raid 0. It has very important files on it. So I guess I used fakeraid because I setup the raid in AMD bios. My question is, if I take this raid to a different machine and boot up with ubuntu or something similar, will I be able to access the array?

Thanks.

 

[13thmonkey]

Maybe/maybe not, not sure what you mean by fake raid. The chipset was doing some of the work with the CPU, in essence it was the raid card, had your card failed you'd be in a similar circumstance, and you'd need a fairly close match. Going on ebay and finding an SB710 mobo would be your best bet. IF you try it in linux and the disks get written to at all in the process, then you've lost it.

No sign of a backup?

 

[ss202sl]

very important files mean that backups are also very important.

 

[spring2012stats]

Maybe/maybe not, not sure what you mean by fake raid. The chipset was doing some of the work with the CPU, in essence it was the raid card, had your card failed you'd be in a similar circumstance, and you'd need a fairly close match. Going on ebay and finding an SB710 mobo would be your best bet. IF you try it in linux and the disks get written to at all in the process, then you've lost it.

No sign of a backup?

 

[spring2012stats]

Maybe/maybe not, not sure what you mean by fake raid. The chipset was doing some of the work with the CPU, in essence it was the raid card, had your card failed you'd be in a similar circumstance, and you'd need a fairly close match. Going on ebay and finding an SB710 mobo would be your best bet. IF you try it in linux and the disks get written to at all in the process, then you've lost it.

No sign of a backup?

 

[spring2012stats]

If I had a backup then I wouldn't be in this mess. But that's a very long story. Gigabyte support told me that even a different board with sb710 will not save me. Fakeraid basically means that the raid is written by an onboard controller.

I don't know how to go about this issue because my computer is dead. All I know is that I read somewhere that Ubuntu may be of help since it actually supports sb710. Doesn't mean that the driver will be able to read the metadata on the array, but I heard that Linux is very good at that

 

[13thmonkey]

If I had a backup then I wouldn't be in this mess. But that's a very long story. Gigabyte support told me that even a different board with sb710 will not save me. Fakeraid basically means that the raid is written by an onboard controller.

I don't know how to go about this issue because my computer is dead. All I know is that I read somewhere that Ubuntu may be of help since it actually supports sb710. Doesn't mean that the driver will be able to read the metadata on the array, but I heard that Linux is very good at that

Terms like fakeraid are really unhelpful. Raid is normally written by a controller be that onboard or on a card, software raid is written by the cpu alone under the control of the OS.

I don't see why another sb710 wouldn't work same bios revision would have the best chance.

How did it die, are you sure it's the mobo and not cpu or ram? Your last resort is Ubuntu and it still needs working hardware.

 

[spring2012stats]

If I had a backup then I wouldn't be in this mess. But that's a very long story. Gigabyte support told me that even a different board with sb710 will not save me. Fakeraid basically means that the raid is written by an onboard controller.

I don't know how to go about this issue because my computer is dead. All I know is that I read somewhere that Ubuntu may be of help since it actually supports sb710. Doesn't mean that the driver will be able to read the metadata on the array, but I heard that Linux is very good at that

Terms like fakeraid are really unhelpful. Raid is normally written by a controller be that onboard or on a card, software raid is written by the cpu alone under the control of the OS.

I don't see why another sb710 wouldn't work same bios revision would have the best chance.

How did it die, are you sure it's the mobo and not cpu or ram? Your last resort is Ubuntu and it still needs working hardware.

 

[spring2012stats]

The causes of the computer failure are still being investigated. Gigabyte gives me different answers to my questions every time I call them, from a power supply issue to a burned out CPU because the fan on the heatsink is not spinning. I don't care about this computer, all I care about is my raid. It will take me weeks to isolate the real culprit, that's why I wanted to pull a fast one and get this done and over with

 

[USAFRet]

This thread is why my sig pic exists----------------->

 

[13thmonkey]

Was the raid setup in bios or in windows?

If the former getting an identical mobo may work, if the latter then the same solution should also work. As you have no idea what is wrong you need a new mobo, cpu, ram and psu. EBay is your friend. And your better hope you didn't use weird stripe sizes, or that you know what they are. Personally I'd use a 3rd disk, install windows on that with only that connected, and then try and get the raid working so that nothing is written to it.

 

[USAFRet]

The causes of the computer failure are still being investigated. Gigabyte gives me different answers to my questions every time I call them, from a power supply issue to a burned out CPU because the fan on the heatsink is not spinning. I don't care about this computer, all I care about is my raid. It will take me weeks to isolate the real culprit, that's why I wanted to pull a fast one and get this done and over with

'Pulling a fast one' may lead to "total death" of your data, instead of just "probable death".

Your best hope is to find an identical motherboard and simply try it.
If it works, great.
If it fails....that's what backups are for.

 

[13thmonkey]

The key to success here is to go very slowly, to think what you are doing, even go so far as to get two other drives and see how the mobo behaves when you've set them up in raid, disconnect and reconnect them, or reconnect them with the cables in different orders, what options do you have use to get the bios to recognise and reconnect vs rebuild. Then go to work on the real drives.

Then get rid of raid 0, make a backup and be thankful you got lucky, if indeed you did.