RAID 0 failure; will a new RAID card fix it?

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kevinliner

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I built a computer back around 2003 that uses 2 WD Raptor's on RAID 0 (stripe), and, from what I can gather, the FastTrak S150 TX2plus card has failed.

The computer had been running fine, and I got a call from my parents saying it wouldn't boot. The FastTrak setup (just after POST) says that the array isn't working because one of the drives has failed. (So, I cannot rebuild the array, etc.) But, both drives power on fine and sound fine; and when I plug in the drives individually, the setup detects them fine, with no errors. This is why I'm guesstimating that it's the card and not the drives.

So, assuming that the card is the problem, would it be possible to buy an identical FastTrak card and get it up and running again without data loss? Or would the RAID re-setup require starting from scratch? My parents have some information that they don't want to lose, but aren't willing to drop $3k to a RAID recovery shop.

Thanks,
Kevin
 
IM pretty positive that the new raid card would work because the card is only their to tell the PC that you want to use a raid config so if the drives are fine then you should be able to just install a new raid card, set it to raid0 and be up and running again. However i have never done that so you might want to wait for a better answer, lol. i just cant see why it wouldn't work though.
 
Well if it turns out that one drive failed, then all data is lost. That is the ugly part of RAID 0. No fault tolerance.
 
Curious, have to atleast attempted to replace the SATA cables? If one is slightly bad, then it will appear as if the array has failed. Also, try to boot to a boot cd and see if it can see each drive individualy, if so, and the cables are good, the card is bad, try to get the exact same controller with the same bios that way you have almost no chance of data loss, other wise, you will loose your data.
 
So, assuming that the card is the problem, would it be possible to buy an identical FastTrak card and get it up and running again without data loss? Or would the RAID re-setup require starting from scratch? My parents have some information that they don't want to lose, but aren't willing to drop $3k to a RAID recovery shop.
Best thing to do is pruchase another RAID card which is the exact same model.
You will need to go into your RAIDs BIOS setting and reset every up again.
After that, provided that there as not been any other data corruption, you should be okay.

 
After that getting pass this little crisis, you might want to rethink on why your parent's need a RAID0? Unless it's business related, I am currently trying to work out way any Mom and Dad needs a RAID0 when a bigger hard drive will do the trick.

As I say to a lot of people. The ZERO is RAID0 normally means the amount of data you are going to have left if one of your hard drive's fails. If it's important data, do not run a RAID0 with out some sort of back up method in place.


Curious, have to atleast attempted to replace the SATA cables? If one is slightly bad, then it will appear as if the array has failed. Also, try to boot to a boot cd and see if it can see each drive individualy, if so, and the cables are good, the card is bad, try to get the exact same controller with the same bios that way you have almost no chance of data loss, other wise, you will loose your data.

If that is the case, I would be replacing both SATA cable. I make sure that the cables are from the same source.
 
Curious, have to atleast attempted to replace the SATA cables? If one is slightly bad, then it will appear as if the array has failed. Also, try to boot to a boot cd and see if it can see each drive individualy, if so, and the cables are good, the card is bad, try to get the exact same controller with the same bios that way you have almost no chance of data loss, other wise, you will loose your data.

Just tested the cables, just in case, and that's not the problem. Also tried the boot CD and it didn't work either: in GParted, it showed both of the drives, but they didn't have anything on them. it showed them as individuals and not as a RAID/single drive, and they were "unallocated."

So, I guess then, if I get a new card I can just hit "rebuild array" and things should hopefully be hunky dory (that is, no lost data)?
 
 
After that getting pass this little crisis, you might want to rethink on why your parent's need a RAID0? Unless it's business related, I am currently trying to work out way any Mom and Dad needs a RAID0 when a bigger hard drive will do the trick.

As I say to a lot of people. The ZERO is RAID0 normally means the amount of data you are going to have left if one of your hard drive's fails. If it's important data, do not run a RAID0 with out some sort of back up method in place.

LOL. You wouldn't believe how often I've been asked "Why a RAID 0?" in the past few days. To answer at least one person, I built it as a gaming machine for myself (no real need for backups), but when my parents' computer died, I gave it to them. They didn't know the importance of backups, and I never really considered it for them. Mea culpa ;).
 
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