Life after RAID?

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chrisdc

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Ok, so the motherboard died. A pair of mirrored raid drives set up with a motherboard specific raid driver survive. The good news is I have another identical motherboard, so I can access the drives. The bad news is I can't spare the motherboard for any length of time.

While I have access to the spare mb, is there a way of getting all the data off (including the programs) in such a way that I can use the backed up data on a completely different computer? Ideally the "backup" would be bootable, but how would it work on a new computer without the necessary new motherboard drivers? And wouldn't the old mb drivers create conflict with the new mb and possibly prevent it from booting at all? The current sata drives run 32bit XP Pro. I can't undo the RAID configuration without losing everything on the drives. If it weren't for that, I'd try uninstalling the existing mb drivers and then just transferring the drives onto a new board. Windows is bound to have a pup when it see's all the new hardware but I can always reregister. I really don't want to reinstall everything as some of the software has to be installed by a third party and it costs us big $$$ every time. Any ideas anyone?
 
If you take a backup with backup products from the likes of Paragon or Acronis you can then perform a restore (to another machine) simply by booting from a restore CD.

I personally use Paragon's Hard Disk Manager Suite & am very happy. See http://www.paragon-software.com/

There are probably free open source equivalents.
 
You could also download a copy of Vmware standalone converter and create a VM of the running machine. Then use esxi as a host to run the VM.

If you don't like vmware, use a similar technique using other vm solution.

Just a thought.
 
Thanks guys, that gives me some options. Will do a bit of reading and look at the costs. I take it then that the backup option built into Windows itself (c:, properties, tools) assumes that you will always be restoring onto the same machine, and will be useless in this situation? Bit of a quaint notion if you think about it. You back up your PC on Friday, go home, over the weekend your shop burns down and then on Monday you go shopping for an identical PC so you can restore your data!
 
rrh said:
If you take a backup with backup products from the likes of Paragon or Acronis you can then perform a restore (to another machine) simply by booting from a restore CD.

I personally use Paragon's Hard Disk Manager Suite & am very happy. See http://www.paragon-software.com/

There are probably free open source equivalents.
Click to expand...

With Paragon (thanks for the link) I have a choice of two software suites, Backup & Recovery or Migration. Both claim to be able to restore to new hardware. Have you had experience with both?
 
LazerFazer said:
Not sure how the backup would work. Perhaps something like Acronis True Image would be useful? I'm not entirely sure it will work, but it may be worth a try.

To get the OS platform-agnostic, you can try http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2007...new-motherboard-without-reinstalling-windows/ or http://www.windowsreinstall.com/install/other/motherboard/winxp.htm .
Click to expand...

Thanks, I've just read through this but it's too risky because of the mb specific raid controllers and mirror configuration. From now on I'm going to stay away from the "proprietary" fancy stuff and try and keep future drive setups a bit more "generic".
 
bekdik said:
You could also download a copy of Vmware standalone converter and create a VM of the running machine. Then use esxi as a host to run the VM.

If you don't like vmware, use a similar technique using other vm solution.

Just a thought.
Click to expand...

Thanks, will look into this....my brains getting full:). The whole VM thing is new to me - but will have to get to grips with it sooner or later. Got to try and get this sucker sorted by Monday.
 
chrisdc said:
With Paragon (thanks for the link) I have a choice of two software suites, Backup & Recovery or Migration. Both claim to be able to restore to new hardware. Have you had experience with both?
Click to expand...

I use the Hard Disk Manager Suite, a Swiss Army knife of utilities for hard disks. I did use it mainly for backup/restore, but (having built a Windows Home Server) I now use the utilities e.g. I recently used it to change the partition sizes on a hard drive.

The suite handles Windows 8, SSD's, VM's etc.

NB: The reason why I like Paragon is that the company was started by the people who created Partition Magic, the first software that allowed one to change the partition sizes of a disk without reformatting etc. There is very little that these guys don't know about hard disks !

Later: I checked their website. I would probably go for the Backup & Recovery 12 Home. Download the trial and give it a whirl. If you like it wait a couple of days: I am pretty sure that they will offer you a discount.
 
rrh said:
I use the Hard Disk Manager Suite, a Swiss Army knife of utilities for hard disks. I did use it mainly for backup/restore, but (having built a Windows Home Server) I now use the utilities e.g. I recently used it to change the partition sizes on a hard drive.

The suite handles Windows 8, SSD's, VM's etc.


NB: The reason why I like Paragon is that the company was started by the people who created Partition Magic, the first software that allowed one to change the partition sizes of a disk without reformatting etc. There is very little that these guys don't know about hard disks !

Later: I checked their website. I would probably go for the Backup & Recovery 12 Home. Download the trial and give it a whirl. If you like it wait a couple of days: I am pretty sure that they will offer you a discount.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm a hairs breadth from giving them my money. Good idea about the trial and then waiting a bit for the possibility of a discount. I learnt the hard (expensive) way that some dating sites do this too :)

I originally had 3 of these motherboards, all set up with the same raid configuration. I'm down to the last one but all the drives have survived and only work on these boards, so I can amortize the cost of the software between them. And as you point out, useful to have anyway.
 
chrisdc said:
Thanks, I'm a hairs breadth from giving them my money. Good idea about the trial and then waiting a bit for the possibility of a discount. I learnt the hard (expensive) way that some dating sites do this too :)

I originally had 3 of these motherboards, all set up with the same raid configuration. I'm down to the last one but all the drives have survived and only work on these boards, so I can amortize the cost of the software between them. And as you point out, useful to have anyway.
Click to expand...

Don't forget that - to the backup - the raid should appear as just another hard drive.

BTW, my favourite saying: a computer system is only as good as its last [tested] backup system :)
 
rrh said:
Don't forget that - to the backup - the raid should appear as just another hard drive.

BTW, my favourite saying: a computer system is only as good as its last [tested] backup system :)
Click to expand...

Yes, good point.

In my case, it's not just about backing up - migrating it successfully to a whole new machine is key here. Did you have a squizzy at Paragons Drive Copy 12 Pro? There seems to be more emphasis on "migration". What do you think? Sorry if I'm being painful here. I know you said you looked at their site. Every time I look, there seems to be another Paragon product to choose from. It's like those blasted 30 page restaurant menus. Eventually you reach a state of paralysis of analysis.

Later....ok have compared them. Only area of concern is BRH 12 - under "basic partitioning" does not have the ability to "create/format/delete". The new drive I want to use is still vacuum sealed in its packaging and has never been formatted.
 
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The Drive Copy software is primarily designed to handle the problems associated with moving your data from the current hard drive to a hard drive of a dissimilar size without (a) losing data or (b) losing disk space - a problem when one uses disk imaging as a backup mechanism. It can also copy between different drive types e.g. SCSI to IDE / SATA etc.

Whilst you could either product to achieve your goal, the Backup/Restore should be easier: take a backup, switch hardware, boot from the Recovery CD (created when you first load the software) then go make/enjoy a cuppa/coffee/beer/whatever ... :)
 
Get the one drive in an enclosure ( or attached to a non-RAID controller on the motherboard ), and boot a linux USB.

Then use dd ( "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" ) or similar to clone the "RAID" drive to the regular drive, and you should be golden.

Problem then becomes that you won't be able to boot windows because you've put a drive into the wrong motherboard next, so you'll have the fun task of trying to sort your drivers out.

Good luck!
 
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