Omega Owners Forum

Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Bandit127 on 10 August 2008, 18:57:20

Title: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Bandit127 on 10 August 2008, 18:57:20
Hi All.

I'm a Raid noob so please forgive my ignorance.

I have a dying Dell XPS set up in Raid 0. Can I reformat to Raid 1 (or even non Raid) without losing data? That way, I assume I can take my data on one old HD and set it up as a slave in a new PC.

(I have less than 1 HDs worth of data - 100Gb on 2 x 150GB discs).

I would rather avoid the expense and hasle of running Raid on my next PC.

Thanks.

Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: JamesV6CDX on 10 August 2008, 18:58:55
I don't know much about this, but If you play about with the RAID controller config, won't you have to re-format the disks to accomodate the new RAID setup?
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: PaulW on 10 August 2008, 19:11:42
unless you backup to another medium, there is no way you can convert from one type of raid to the other without losing everything on the discs.
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Plomien on 10 August 2008, 19:20:16
Quote
unless you backup to another medium, there is no way you can convert from one type of raid to the other without losing everything on the discs.
indeed any formating will wipe the drives and you will lose that data, if there is anything you need to keep burn it to a cd/dvd-rw then format and reinstall
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: theolodian on 10 August 2008, 19:29:41
Quote
unless you backup to another medium, there is no way you can convert from one type of raid to the other without losing everything on the discs.
Eh?  You can break mirroring without any trouble.
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Taxi_Driver on 10 August 2008, 20:13:58
Quote
Quote
unless you backup to another medium, there is no way you can convert from one type of raid to the other without losing everything on the discs.
Eh?  You can break mirroring without any trouble.

Mirroring is Raid1........and yes raid1 you can break.......but Bandits problem is the fact his setup is raid0.......and raid0 you carnt.....its goodbye data......

So as others have suggested get the data you need onto a backup or dvd/etc  :y

Just noticed you have 100G of info so backup onto dvd bit impractical.......whats dying on the pc? if its not the disks.....and another hardware prob....think i maybe inclined to take the disks out and bung them in your new pc......i think XP (and poss vista) is clever enough to work out they are part of a raid0 and carry on reading them (tho check with someone else first )  :y


Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Kevin Wood on 10 August 2008, 20:17:49
If it's hardware RAID the controller will perform a layer of formatting below the file system / partitioning dependant on the RAID setup, so I think, if you change the RAID you will lose the filesystem(s) on the previous setup.

I would rebuild the new RAID setup on a new pair of drives and copy the data over. Excuses to buy new drives are not a bad thing when you rely on them to keep your data safe.

Kevin
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: TheBoy on 10 August 2008, 20:32:01
Some mid and high end raid controllers can change raid type on the fly, but not most cheapie mobo solutions...
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Taxi_Driver on 10 August 2008, 20:36:03
One of pc's upstairs is using 3 scsi disks as a spanned drive   :-X

Not good practice  ::)

However as i type its doing a backup to another pc......50G i dont want to lose, its got lots more data on it......but not fussed if the rest gets lost  :y
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Taxi_Driver on 10 August 2008, 20:38:33
Quote
Some mid and high end raid controllers can change raid type on the fly, but not most cheapie mobo solutions...

I suspect Bandits is software raid  :-/
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Bandit127 on 10 August 2008, 21:02:07
Don't know if it's hardware or software. It's done by Nvidia and posts a message of success before the XP booting progress bar, so I possibly hardware.

The problem with the PC is random hanging during BIOS loading which is getting increasingly frequent. No BIOS beep code but the lights on the front panel stick on
12
or 123
out of a possible 1234. (These lights are probably a DELL thing).

Hope this helps.

Looks like a USB hard disk might be the answer, but I was hoping to avoid the expense.
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: cem_devecioglu on 10 August 2008, 22:48:07
Your batteries on the board may be empty :-/
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Bandit127 on 10 August 2008, 23:30:42
Quote
Your batteries on the board may be empty :-/
Hmmm. Answer looks like - leave it always on and save like hell for a USB hard disk then.

At least I get a 600W warm air heating system sitting in the corner of my living room until I get it sorted.  ;D ;D ;D
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: cem_devecioglu on 10 August 2008, 23:37:09
Best approach for raid systems are mostly 1+0 (mirroring and striping although most expensive)  instead of 5..

However even with 3 disks you can implement raid 5.. Will be cheaper ..

And as an experience machines crashing on bios start up are mostly from battery problems (some critical bios parameters are lost) or due to bad overclocking.. :-/
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Bandit127 on 10 August 2008, 23:47:17
Quote
Best approach for raid systems are mostly 1+0 (mirroring and striping although most expensive)  instead of 5..

However even with 3 disks you can implement raid 5.. Will be cheaper ..

And as an experience machines crashing on bios start up are mostly from battery problems (some critical bios parameters are lost) or due to bad overclocking.. :-/
Good call on battery - will try replacing it.

Re overclocking. It's a Dell. Even though it's an nforce chipset and a geforce 6800 graphics card, there are no overclocking options. Shame coz the 3.2 ghz cpu will overclock like the best...
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: TheBoy on 11 August 2008, 08:08:18
Quote
Best approach for raid systems are mostly 1+0 (mirroring and striping although most expensive)  instead of 5..

However even with 3 disks you can implement raid 5.. Will be cheaper ..

And as an experience machines crashing on bios start up are mostly from battery problems (some critical bios parameters are lost) or due to bad overclocking.. :-/
Depends on the application, rule of thumb is R5 for system predominantly reads (as R5 is poor for writes), and R1 for system with a lot of writes.  R10 (or 1+0 or 0+1) is the best of the std levels for performance, but also the most expensive.  Needs a good controller that implements it properly as well, ideally across multiple scsi channels.
Title: Re: PC problems... Raid 0 => Raid 1 and keep data?
Post by: Bandit127 on 02 September 2008, 23:03:35
Sorry for the bump all, but the simple answer to the unreliable Raid 0 is - about £53 for one of these:
Western Digital Elements 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Digital-Elements-500GB-External/dp/B000OS54TA/ref=pd_cp_ce_1?pf_rd_p=136153791&pf_rd_s=center-41&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=B000WP0NM8&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=1BTFF7015041BDTD6D1J)
Slow and a bit clunky maybe, but probably ideal for proper (...) backups.