[Turge]

I'm hoping someone out there can help me. I have an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe mobo with 2 Maxtor 6L300S0 (300GB SATA) setup in a striped array (RAID 0) on the SiI3114 controller. One drive is experiencing problems (takes a few secs to startup from cold boot, generates errors in MaxBlast). I have visited Maxtor's website and filled out the Advanced RMA, so a new HD is being shipped to me.

Does anyone know how I could go about replacing the drive with the new one without having to backup 550GB of data?

[ripken204]

umm, its raid0 so there is no way to repair the array. if you wanted to transfer all the info to another hdd then you can do that.

[Vitalix]

Not without a third drive. As soon as you unplug a drive, ALL your data is gone.
Burn essentials to DVD, or offload to a USB drive in the interim. There is no other way.

[jcarle]

There is a way...

Norton Ghost (version 8 I believe)...

Disconnect the good drive so that only your failing drive is left. Then connect the new drive that you're shipped. Boot to DOS, ghost the contents of the failing drive to the new drive. Remove the failing drive, connect both good drives and everything should be copacetic.

Oh and next time? Buy a Western Digital or Seagate.

[Turge]

So, I should only have to ghost it?

Will I need to remove it from the drive array (through the Silicon BIOS Raid Configuration Utility) and add the new one or will it the system simply think the new drive is the old one?

[jcarle]

You actually have to plug both the old failing drive and the new drive onto standard (non-raid) sata ports for the ghost to work... it'll tell you during the ghost that it can't recognize the operating system and ask you if you want to do a sector by sector transfer instead, to which you reply yes.

[larciel]

very helpful tip. thanks

*btw. you don't lose array 'as soon as you unplug' cable from the HD.

[nmX.Memnoch]

As long as you don't change the configuration on each single drive you won't.

Just in case though, he should be sure to double check his stripe size. If the controller does clear the configuration for some reason you can recreate the array as long as nothing on the drives have changed and you configure it exactly as it was.

[Vitalix]

larciel, on Jan 4 2006, 11:48 PM, said:

*btw. you don't lose array 'as soon as you unplug' cable from the HD.

I meant if your fire it up. Your machine won't boot. You will not lose any data if you simply unplug it.
The Ghost approach should work, but I would back up critical data just in case.