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I have (had) a motherboard that supports (supported) fakeraid, which I used to build a RAID 1 with 2 WD Red 1TB. My motherboard died (as you would have guessed already) and now I have 2 options:

  • Buy a new motherboard, exactly the same model and build the RAID 1, in which case I'm guessing my data will just show up, right?

  • Use some dark and undocumented method in dmraid that will let me recover my data. I'm not sure if such a thing actually exists, so if you know if such a method is fisible, please describe how/what should I do.

alexandernst
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1 Answers1

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Take a look at dmraid. If you are lucky enough to have supported metadata it might be able to help. But be very careful. I'd use it only readonly to get the data and then get rid of the software raid.

Edit so that my comments dont get too long:

As far as my understanding of this trickery goes, yes. Fakeraid is called fake, because it does not do anything. There is just very little code in BIOS that lets you create/assemble the array (write metadata) and boot of it. Then driver takes over and does everything at OS level. So, you have the drives (hopefuly intact), the metada is still there and as linux does not use driver, but dmraid + mdraid combination, you have that as well. That way you should be able to boot up different linux machine and use the drives just as before. But I would still consider this rather temporary and go with proper mdraid solution in the future.

I'd actually say that dmraid never even bothers to check/detect the hardware. It just needs the metadata from drives.

Fox
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  • Yes, I was already using dmraid. My question is how exactly would I mount/use dmraid to assemble the disks without the fakeraid. – alexandernst May 02 '15 at 21:23
  • I think you do not need any hardware for that. It's just metadata so it probably should work when connected to any other controller. – Fox May 02 '15 at 21:25
  • So... I'd just take my disks, connect them to another linux machine and ask dmraid to detect them? And that would work even if my RAID was assembled with my motherboard's fakeraid? – alexandernst May 02 '15 at 21:27
  • @alexandernst updated my answer ... – Fox May 02 '15 at 21:33
  • Ok, let me get another machine (may take me a few hours) and try that. Let's hope everything will go fine. – alexandernst May 02 '15 at 21:36
  • good luck, fingers crossed ;-) – Fox May 02 '15 at 21:37