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I have a RAID 1 that's spordically healthy; I finally narrowed it down to a cracked SATA connector on the RAID board. If I hold it ~just~ right, i get full contact on the connector and everything works fine. More often than not, the RAID controller reports one disc being down. Obviously, I need to replace the controller. Before I jump into that project, though, I want to understand what I'm up against in the process. I'm confident that my DATA itself is healthy, but the hardware used to access it unreliable at best.

Apart from knowing the different RAID levels, my knowledge of RAID technology is weak. Are these just standard NTFS volumes controlled and managed by my card? Or is there something proprietary that the card does between the OS and the disks?

Can I just replace a RAID card with any other RAID card and it'll work? Alternately, can I just take one of my RAID rives (since they're mirrored), plug it into an eSATA drive housing and access the data normally for transfer to a NEW RAID?

Or am I looking at the prospect of holding the connector ~just~ right for hours while I copy everything to an external drive for re-copying to a new RAID once the hardware arrives?

What should I know and prepare for?

2 Answers 2

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  1. What the RAID card exposes to windows is a standard NTFS volume. There is definitely something proprietary in most RAID cards. Something that prevents you from using it outside the RAID controller.

  2. If you use the same RAID card and driver, firmware.. 100% yes. If not, that number decreases rapidly. No, I really don't think that will work.

  3. Why? If it's RAID 1, it's a mirror. Just copy from the one disk, reformat both disks, install with new card, make the RAID volume, copy info back on.

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    +1 for point 3. One disk should be sufficient to read all the data. Regarding the second point: YOu can phone the manufacturer and ask which cards of their are compatible. (e.g. my 3ware 9650 disks moved effortlessly to a 3ware 9750 card. But I did call their support before buying the new card).
    – Hennes
    Jun 19, 2013 at 14:55
  • Very good point, definitely get an answer from the manufacturer, and hope they're a reputable company like Hennes dealt with.
    – NickW
    Jun 19, 2013 at 15:01
  • 1-that's what I was afraid of, 2-I've been unsuccessful in finding an exact match for the card new OR on ebay. 3-The RAID software prevents my OS from using a single drive as the RAID drive. I can go into the raid software to restore the mirrored volume, but for tht, I need the second SATA connector to work. Am I missing something in your answer? Like I said, data integrity is good, it's just getting AT it with a single SATA connector operating.
    – dwwilson66
    Jun 19, 2013 at 15:08
  • @NickW - based on my poor luck finding the card specs, I think they're on the dis- end of the reputability spectrum. :|
    – dwwilson66
    Jun 19, 2013 at 15:10
  • That is really dumb, the whole idea of RAID1 is the fact that you don't lose data if one drive fails.. if you can't access the drive, how could it possibly be of any use? Are there any BIOS or run time options you can change?
    – NickW
    Jun 19, 2013 at 15:12
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The RAID controller sits between your OS and the disks connected to it. In your case, the RAID controller takes 2 physical disks and creates 1 logical volume. As for as the OS is concerned it can only see the logical volume. It doest know if there is 1 disk, or 1000. All it sees is what the RAID controller presents.

Is it proprietary? The answer is really based on the RAID controller's chipset. Replacing the card with the same chipset should allow you to continue without doing anything extra. A similar chipset may be able to be used without extra work too. You would have to contact the manufacturer of the card to see if they are compatible. A different brand of card, with a different chipset would not be able to read the RAID setup of another chipset.

If you buy a card with a different RAID controller you may be able to do this. Leave the old RAID controller in, with one drive connected to it. It is just running in a state of non-redundancy. Install the new RAID controller card and attach the other drive to it. Hopefully, you can create a new RAID volume (mirror) with one disk. Most modern RAID controllers let you do this. You can copy all the data from the old disk to the new. If its a boot drive, you can clone it.

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