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Migrating a RAID set to another controller

D

DLpres

n00b
Joined
Jul 16, 2013
Messages
7
Hi,

I wanted to essentially confirm that RAID arrays are very specific to their controller. I can look at it in two ways:

1. Security through obscurity: if a malicious party gets their hands on your RAID5 array's drives - without the chassis/controller itself, and without knowing the exact model (or happening to have a matching one) - how hard will they have to work to gain access to the data?
I'm not the Pentagon, just work for a small company, so my concern is more about a random burglar than the Smoking Man from the X-Files.

2. On the same token, I have another, RAID6 array in an integrated single-controller chassis (appliance). It's pretty obscure (made by QSAN for an OEM of an OEM) and will be out of warranty soon. I'm thinking ahead, in case the controller dies, am I essentially SOL with the data on the array?
 
back up your data to IDE or AHCI disk :)
IME ..very few arrays will migrate.
If it's some strange controller..They're gonna have a hard time.
but..If they're there stealing your hdds..Why wouldn't they grab the other stuff, too?
There's no like,..Taking an array made on Areca and transferring to IRST..It's not gonna happen.. :)
 
1. Not hard at all. Software reconstruction software such as R-studio can extract the data quickly and easily.

2. No for the same reason as number one.
 
I'm not saying it's likely, but anyone with the same controller chipset will be able to essentially plug-and-play the drives.

An illustration: My RAID0 disk on my previous computer was on the motherboard's intel ICH9 RAID controller. All I had to do with my new computer, whose motherboard was running ICH10, was plug in the drives and they were automatically recognized (of course, I had to designate the RAID level function in the controller, but that's not tough).

I know, my illustration isn't the most representative; it's not using an enterprise-level RAID controller, but rather the generic and ubiquitous Intel controller. But you don't have data/drive security just because the disks are part of an array on a specific controller. If you're worried about someone stealing the drives, make sure you've got some sort of physical barrier protection.
 
If you're concerned about uptime, keep a spare controller handy. If you're concerned about data loss, you should already be backing it up.

As described above it doesn't really offer any security for your data. For that you'd want to secure your premises and potentially look at encryption if it's sensitive information - not really the most practical of options, but some things call for it.
 
As for #2, we are already backing it up... to the array from #1 :) It would be sensible to have a spare controller handy, I just don't see it happening. The controller was actually causing problems earlier this year and it took our reseller 1.5 months to scramble to get it to the OEM, which gave it to their OEM, which sent it back to Korea to someone who actually had a clue how to service that EOL controller. More likely, sooner or later we'll replace this chassis with a more modern one, with dual controllers from an established brand (e.g. Infortrend) with proper support.
 
There is a standard for on-disk RAID format but practically nobody uses it, much less by default.

Also, if you are on windows you have to deal with the controller drive issue.

I think hacking up md raid to have a custom header is a fine way to guard against casual burglars and sloppy IT departments who put drives into the office trash (not sure what is worse :)).
 
uOpt said:
sloppy IT departments who put drives into the office trash
Click to expand...

After a zero-write pass, I sometimes run our decommissioned drives through our commercial tape degausser, but hard drives seems to stress it and make it overheat. I have more fun with method #2 - drilling through, then slamming them with a hammer until they're all deformed. Safe enough for our data :)
 
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