Restoring onboard Raid array after mobo replacement

[pclark16]

Hi Everyone,

I had an ASUS P4P800-E Delux Mobo and was using two HDD's with the onboard Promise Raid Array. Recently the motherboard died and after reading abit about how to keep my data i had to track down an identical replacement so it had the same RAID Controller.

My question is now after reinstalling the motherboard how do i find the original RAID array. It looks to me like i have to recreate a new RAID Array but i'm worried this will erase any data i had on the 2 drives (setup as RAID 0). Stupid me had all my data and OS on this RAID array.

I originally though i could just put the new motherboard in and it would detect the drives as already being a part of an array but it doesnt seem to be the case.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

Cheers.

 

[dbData]

If you have extra drives you could try creating an array identical to the one that you're having problems with. Once the new array is created successfully, power down and replace the new array with the old and see what happens.

Rick
The Data Recovery Resource Center

http://www.iswamp.com

 

[stduc]

I think you need to set up 2 new drives of the same capacity (but not RAID 0) and a third drive you can install XP on with the RAOD drivers. Then install getdataback (you have to pay for it) and add your old drives (they don't have to be on a raid array - any old connections will do as long as they are both present.

Then you can recover the old system. It may even boot.

[navy]When I married "Miss Right" I didn't realise her first name was 'always'. LOL[/navy]

 

[wahnula]

Hmmm...here's how I would try it. Get a cheap large IDE drive. Rather than just boot it up, I would first install Windows on the IDE drive and supply the F6 drivers for the RAID controller. Supply chipset drivers & update Windows, update or downgrade the BIOS to the same version of the old install. Power down and connect your old drives, I am assuming they are SATA, make sure SATA RAID is enabled in BIOS. Leave the IDE drive as boot drive. Reboot, see if the array is detected in BIOS, it should be. Boot into Windows and move as much data as you can over to the IDE drive.

In the event this does not work, at least you have a working install to run data recovery software, and a spare drive for what we now know is very important...regular backups.

Tony

 

[stduc]

OK wahnula - that may work - but the one thing you must not be tempted to do is initialize the drive in XP if it sees them as foreign drives or unknown. Unless the original RAID configuration appears in XP intact - do nothing & use something like getdataback. Getdataback will see the drives as long as they are seen in the BIOS.

[navy]When I married "Miss Right" I didn't realise her first name was 'always'. LOL[/navy]

 

[wahnula]

but the one thing you must not be tempted to do is initialize the drive in XP

Not me!!! Sorry I should have mentioned that if you don't see the array as normal head over to

http://www.runtime.org.

They also have a RaidReconstructor, which may ne indicated in this case:

http://www.runtime.org/raid.htm

You need to decide how valuable your data is. These programs can work miracles.

Tony