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[Bandit127]

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.

[JamesV6CDX]

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?

[PaulW]

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.

[Plomien]

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

[theolodian]

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.

[Taxi_Driver]

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  

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 )  

[Kevin Wood]

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

[TheBoy]

Some mid and high end raid controllers can change raid type on the fly, but not most cheapie mobo solutions...

[Taxi_Driver]

One of pc's upstairs is using 3 scsi disks as a spanned drive  

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  

[Taxi_Driver]

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  :-/

[Bandit127]

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.

[cem_devecioglu]

Your batteries on the board may be empty :-/

[Bandit127]

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.  

[cem_devecioglu]

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.. :-/

[Bandit127]

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...