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Migrating RAID0 to a different controller without data loss

J

jbrukardt

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 28, 2005
Messages
1,494
Hello, i have somewhat of a predicament here.

I have a 1TB raid0 on a Promise Fastrak TX2200 SATAII raid controller (33mhz 32bit pci). My new motherboard has onboard sataII linked to the pci-e bus (so i wouldnt be limited by the pci bus (i was before, my drives can do 200+ mb/s, but were only doing 129 because of the pci bus).

I have no place to backup 1tb of data, and was wondering if it would possible to migrate the array from the TX2200 to the onboard Nforce Pro SATA controller without data loss. I know its a long shot, but does anyone have any ideas. I know it heavily depends on stripe size if that helps

Thanks in advance
 
i know with my highpoint i could unplug the card and swap it between pc's with out it forgetting where the drives are located on the cables, stripe size and type... i could just plug it back in and it worked... dont know if yours will or not.. im assumeing you will be transfering the controller from pc to pc...

the only other think i could think of would be to boot off a live cd and transfer the files via lan... it would take forever, but it could be done

i also know theres a program out there that can supposidly *de-stripe* the drives how you would go about re-stripeing the drives.. i dont know.. (nor do i know what the name of the program is)

when you say you have a 1tb array to move, do you mean you have 1tb of data as well, or are you like me , have 400gb of storage but only 90gb of acctual data?

edit: your just looking at moveing the drives??? from one controller to a different controller? supposedly it isnt possible.. different protocols (for lack of a better/correct term) ect, at least that is what i was told, your best bet is a good back up to dvd and hope you dont forget anything

thore
 
Yeah, for clarification, i need to move the drives. The new motherboard only has 1 pci slot and i need it for my audigy2 :(. I'll already be using a gateway box to dial in to the internet becuase i cant have my modem wasting that pci slot. And yes, the array is completely full, i have like 20 gigs available at any one time


Edit: hmmm, that "de-stripe" concept sounds interesting though. I could live with just having my drives non raided. It would be a hell of a lot better than data loss. Ill have to try to dig something up on that
 
jbrukardt said:
And yes, the array is completely full, i have like 20 gigs available at any one time
Click to expand...
you like life on the edge, huh?
 
EnderW said:
you like life on the edge, huh?
Click to expand...
"He may have paid for all of his computer chair, but he'll only need the edge!" :D

Moving RAID0 between different manufacture's controllers probably won't ever work. I've moved arrays between the same family of cards (3Ware escalade, HP NetRAID, Compaq SmartArrays, etc) w/o any issue. I'd be interested to know if it works.
 
jbrukardt said:
I have a 1TB raid0 on a Promise Fastrak TX2200 SATAII raid controller (33mhz 32bit pci). My new motherboard has onboard sataII linked to the pci-e bus (so i wouldnt be limited by the pci bus (i was before, my drives can do 200+ mb/s, but were only doing 129 because of the pci bus).

I have no place to backup 1tb of data, and was wondering if it would possible to migrate the array from the TX2200 to the onboard Nforce Pro SATA controller without data loss. I know its a long shot, but does anyone have any ideas. I know it heavily depends on stripe size if that helps
Click to expand...

If you have no place to back up the data, should you really be storing it on RAID0?

The stripe size is the last of your worries. While you'll want identical settings between the source and target controllers, your main worry is that they map and address the drives in exactly the same way, and have the same structure for any metadata stored on the drives.

Odds are that it won't work, since that Promise card uses a different chipset, BIOS, and drivers than your NForce SATA controller, but you might be lucky. Very, very lucky.
 
Luckier than someone surviving a direct assault on an Imperial Star Destroyer. I will need a Star Wars geek to quote Threepio on the exact figure. This wouldn't change if he was running RAID-5 or 0+1 either.

Seriously, the only way to find out is to try. Hook up the drives in the exact same order they were on the Promise controller, and try to hit a home run. Methinks you'll have no joy, as the metadata about the array won't be recognized by the nForce controller. However, consider this a positive opportunity - you are getting a real motivation to backup before one of the drives fail, in which case you'd lose your data anyway. Methinks you can deal with onboard sound instead of losing your data, but that's just me personally.

Time to prioritize what gets backed up to CD/DVD first, and get as much off the array as you can.

No more bashing the OP's decision to use RAID-0. He'd still be in this jam if he was using RAID-5 or 0+1, and while his using RAID-0 for all of his data with no backup strategy is obviously not a good situation, repeatedly pointing it out to him will not get him out of this pickle. If you have nothing nice to say, then please don't say anything. - DL
 
Its not possibile to do this, even a different firmware/hardware revision on the controller would create problems let alone using another manufacturers card.
 
DougLite said:
Luckier than someone surviving a direct assault on an Imperial Star Destroyer. I will need a Star Wars geek to quote Threepio on the exact figure. This wouldn't change if he was running RAID-5 or 0+1 either.
Click to expand...
http://www.nightly.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=025409;p=0

Sorry, threepio doesn't finish the sentence. Now we'll never know.

It would be different if he were using Linux's software raid. One of its strong points is that you *can* move to a different controller, motherboard, whatever, without going through this process.

 
Okay Guys,

Thanks for the info, unfortunately its what i exspected. It not like the data i have on there is mission critical, its hundreds of hours of dv video (the box is a video workstation, and i need the raid0 for pure speed). Id just rather not lose it.

Has anyone else ever heard of Thore's suggestion of "de-striping" the drive without data loss. I dug around and couldnt find anything at all really. If anyone has info on destriping a drive that would be a viable solution.


Thanks again, and dont worry about the raid0 bashing, i know its risky, and thats why i pick high end drives with low failure rates, and make sure my rails are perfect.
 
jbrukardt said:
Okay Guys,

Thanks for the info, unfortunately its what i exspected. It not like the data i have on there is mission critical, its hundreds of hours of dv video (the box is a video workstation, and i need the raid0 for pure speed). Id just rather not lose it.

Has anyone else ever heard of Thore's suggestion of "de-striping" the drive without data loss. I dug around and couldnt find anything at all really. If anyone has info on destriping a drive that would be a viable solution.


Thanks again, and dont worry about the raid0 bashing, i know its risky, and thats why i pick high end drives with low failure rates, and make sure my rails are perfect.
Click to expand...
Even "high end" SCSI/nearline drives fail occasionally - ask any IT manager. As long as you keep them cool and have a high quality PSU, the probability of failure is very low, but still present. In addition, there are other sources of data loss, including user error, viruses, corruption, etc that only backups to removable media protect against. In your situation, even a 400GB external HDD that can hold just under half of your data is better than nothing, and is certainly a worthy investment. That will protect some of your data agianst drive failure, as well as accidental or malicious file system level losses. You can get 400GB of external storage for about $250 or a little more, cheap peace of mind, and it would take less than 8 hours to fill it. A simple once a week backup will do a lot to protect your data.

You will not be able to "destripe" the array - removing any of the disks will break it. It is possible to do some tricksl ike this with fault tolerant RAID levels such as 5 and 6, but once you build a RAID-0 array, you are stuck with it until you get up the gumption to rebuild and start over. Sorry.
 
Hence why i admitted it was risky :) Okay, looks like im resigned to my fate. I either

A) use onboard sound until a pci-e X-fi comes out (so i can use the one pci slot for my controller).

B) Buy another TB of drives

C) Get a fibre link, and put the drives in a storage server

Edit: or maybe ill get lucky, and find out im secretly Han Solo and survive a direct assault on a star destroyer
 
I have a Promise SX4000 Lite...
I've moved that card to two different systems and have not have any issues of my raid 0 pr0n array
being detected by windows. I just made sure to have the drivers present on the system
before I actually install the card.

I can take the 4x300gig Maxtors out and put in 4 other 250gig Maxtors and set those up as
a regular JBOD array and have no problems getting the drives recognized in XP (data intact).

But I've never updated the firmware (I bought it from a friend).
 
Yah, you're moving the card with the array, i want to move the array off the card :), which it seems isnt possible
 
jbrukardt said:
Yah, you're moving the card with the array, i want to move the array off the card :), which it seems isnt possible
Click to expand...

With a RAID 1 array maybe but definetly not with RAID 0.
 
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