Question About RAID 1 (Marvell)

[Tony Rotten]

I guess I don't understand well the consequences of using a mirrored pair of disks. I have the 2 e-SATA ports of an Intel DX38BT MoBo in RAID 1 (Marvell controller) configuration. (Two 750GB drives.)

All this time I thought that the catchphrase "hot swappable" at least meant that if I took one of the hard drives out when the PC had been turned OFF normally, that the disk that I took out would immediately work in a second PC upon installation, showing ALL data (i.e., directories and files) as the mirrored pair showed in the original PC when in operation.

No such luck. Twice did this not work. Upon starting another PC with the former in-a-RAID1-array-disk, Win7 64-bit reported "RAW" status on the disk with the corresponding loss of data.

What good is a RAID 1 array if the data in the drives is not recoverable when simply removing one of the disks (with the PC OFF no less).

Am I doing something wrong? I thought that MoBo-based RAID was superior to say, Win7 way of doing it?

TIA

 

[Blue Fox]

Hot-swap means that you can pull a disk when the system is powered up. You don't need for it to be part of a RAID array to do this. Hot-swap functionality in a RAID array would consist of you being able to take out a dead drive and replacing it without shutting down your system. Since different RAID controllers write the RAID metadata in different ways, you pulling a drive and expecting to read it on another system isn't going to work unless it has a similar controller.

 

[Tony Rotten]

Thanks, that explains it.

Since I originally wanted two drives to have the same information which could be retrieved with zero notice (on any of the two disks) in any other PC, RAID 1 is not good for me then.

I am now going to try Windows 7 mirroring, after turning OFF Marvell's.

I'll see if after turning OFF the (Win7) mirroring, I can have two separate drives with the same data that can be read anywhere.

Thanks.

 

[Blue Fox]

Why not use the Intel controller you have on your motherboard? It is extremely common and most other Intel boards will be able to read the RAID array.

 

[Tony Rotten]

I don't know that the Intel controller of the MoBo will do RAID for the eSATA ports... (?)

 

[Old Hippie]

I don't know that the Intel controller of the MoBo will do RAID for the eSATA ports... (?)

eSATA ports are SATA ports that have been wired for convenient access outside of the case.

Many MBs use a different controller for the eSATA ports because the main Intel/AMD chipsets only have 6 ports but you could use any ports on the main chipset to connect external drives and make them eSATA.