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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?
1+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 – 2013-06-19T14:55:40.840
Very good point, definitely get an answer from the manufacturer, and hope they're a reputable company like Hennes dealt with. – NickW – 2013-06-19T15:01:12.733
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 – 2013-06-19T15:08:50.260
@NickW - based on my poor luck finding the card specs, I think they're on the dis- end of the reputability spectrum. :| – dwwilson66 – 2013-06-19T15:10:06.580
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 – 2013-06-19T15:12:12.410
@NickW -...again, confirming my suspicion they they're on the diresputable end of the spectrum. It's a perfect solution if a DRIVE fails, but if the card itself fails, a big ol' facepalm. I'll hunt around and see if there are any settings in BIOS/firmware/etc. At least I have a better understanding what I'm looking for. Worst case scenario, I may just solder jumpers between the contacts long enough to make it work and dump the data. Looks like I'm in for a long weekend. – dwwilson66 – 2013-06-19T15:22:22.783
Yeah, but if your drive really physically dies, it would be like there is nothing connected to the second slot. The whole failed RAID card can be a pain no matter what brand you use, if it's good it will work with other cards, and replacements are easily found. I have used controllers where disks have failed, they complain about being in a degraded state, but they do let you access the data on the good drive, because RAID is there just for that.. redundancy. – NickW – 2013-06-19T15:57:49.303