Moving a raid 0 setup to another PC 4

[AP81]

Hi,

I have a PCI raid card (silicon chipset) which is set to raid 0 (2 x 250 GB drives). I want to move this to another PC.

If I install the raid card and WinXP drivers on the new PC, then set up the drives and raid configuration again, will all my data still be there?

Thanks,
Adam

 

[Nelviticus]

You shouldn't need to set up the drives and RAID configuration again - doing so will probably wipe the data.

The drives on some RAID cards are seen by Windows as just an IDE drive in which case you wouldn't even need to install any drivers, just the Windows configuration & management utilities.

However, despite all that I'd strongly recommend that you back up the data first if you can. That way even if things do get messed up all you've lost is time.

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[kmcferrin]

Agreed, if you're using the same card and the same disks then you should be able to just move everything, connect it up the same way, and have it work. But I'd definitely make a backup before I tried it. With RAID 1 you'd at worst end up with a single drive and one a blank drive, but since you're using RAID 0 you could lose everything if you run into issues.

 

[ibmtech65]

Is the other machine the exact same as in system board? You could probably move card and drives and have it work but if the board is different you might have some driver issues.

 

[wahnula]

Clone the array first, to a single onboard IDE or SATA drive. Ghost 2003 will clone your array to a smaller drive (than 500GB if necessary). Running RAID 0, you should have a 500 GB backup drive anyway, if not they're around $100 now and worth every penny.

This way you have a foolproof way to recover your array, restoring from an image instead of standard file backup. Heck, I would clone AND backup if I were moving my RAID 0 array!

Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me

 

[AP81]

ibmtech65 - this is different motherboard. Old board was a socket 462, new board is a socket AM2 (different manufacturers too).

Thanks for your input. I certainly wouldn't perform this task without backing up my data first, however I was interested to see whether it could be done.

I am still going to do it anyway just to see how if works.

Thanks.