PCA Forums

Here is the deal....I gave up on the USB keyboard and said the hell with it and got myself a new mobo.

Problem: My old mobo had a Promise RAID on it and I had one HDD on it. The HDD wasnt in a RAID with anyother drive just using it for the extra IDE. The new mobo doesnt have a RAID and it will not read the data (of course...duh).

Is there a way to see the files? basically undo what the RAID did. I NEED THAT DATA and I really dont want to go get a promise card but will if I have to

not as far as I know.

Greg

If you weren't running a RAID array on the old mobo then the drive is NOT in any special format. A RAID controller with no array, or the array disabled, just works like a regular controller.

Are you SURE you can't read any data off the drive, or did you just swap the mobo and find that you now can't boot from it? That's normal. If you swap mobos and you were using a RAID controller before then the hardware address for the boot partitioned has changed. You should get a BSOD message when you try to boot to the effect that the boot partition is innaccessible.

The drive is still readable however. If you put it in another computer as a slave you'd be able to read it.

You can can make the drive boot from your new mobo by doing a repair install (which you need to do anyway to allow XP to properly redetect all the new hardware).

Boot from the XP CD. If the new mobo has a RAID controller you'll need to press F6 when prompted for SCSI drivers and have the RAID controller drivers handy on a floppy.

Hit ENTER at the first menu prompt and after the EULA agreement select the REPAIR option in the 2nd menu (do NOT select the Repair from Recovery Console option in the first menu).

A repair takes half an hour. XP will re-install all drivers. It will use XP generic drivers (same as if it was doing a new install) so when it's done you'll need to install any updated drivers (mobo, video, etc drivers).

After that you'll need to re-install Service Pack 1 (unless your XP CD includes SP1) and all the XP Critical Updates. All your software will still be installed.

Originally posted by FlyingPenguin
If you weren't running a RAID array on the old mobo then the drive is NOT in any special format. A RAID controller with no array, or the array disabled, just works like a regular controller.

Not Promise. They have a special feature crap that makes it a single drive RAID, which is like completely and totally invalid. I didn't believe it at first but I read the manual for my Promise card and sure enough it's a mode that is made for single drives that makes the drive unreadable by non-Promise chipsets.

Not Promise. They have a special feature crap that makes it a single drive RAID, which is like completely and totally invalid. I didn't believe it at first but I read the manual for my Promise card and sure enough it's a mode that is made for single drives that makes the drive unreadable by non-Promise chipsets.

Sounds exactly like my problem.
If i were to put a promise PCI controler in there could I read the data?
It was only a data drive so no problem getting windows up and running... im using another drive for that. But the RAID drive has all my install disks and my quicken data on it that I really need.

Have to be a Promise RAID card. Might want to try hooking up the windows drive to the regular IDE of the mobo that has the Promise chip and copying the necessary info or even Ghosting it and then restoring the image when you get the drive readable again.

That's what I was going to suggest. If you still have the mobo connect the drive to it again and Ghost and image of it to another drive, then Ghost it back while it's connected to the new mobo.

been trying that all day long... I guess that when I pulled the mobo out I screwed up the mobo...
I can not even get it to post. And I have 9million computer parts and CPUs I have tried in the thing. I believe I scratched the back of the mobo and made it unworkable. DAMNIT.

Im off to CompUSA to try a Promise RAID controller

I don't think that will work either. It's almost like Xp's software raid solution.

Well CompUSA didnt have a promise.
Why dont you think that will work ?

Sounds like promise uses a type of format when it sets up a raid array. so why wont a promise card read it?

I dont know why my old mobo will not post.
I get the codes "FF" when I turn it on... FF should be a successfull boot correct?
But this FF comes right as I click the power button and no beeps nothing. No matter if I have ram or AGP in there.
sonds like I fubared the old mobo which would have been my ticket to reading the data.

A Promise controller SHOULD work, but I don't know if Promise changed their coding scheme somewhere along the way.

If the controller uses the same chipset then it should be okay.

You try that mobo outside of a case with only 1 stick of ram and a vid card?

yeah.
Im trying the mobo outside (new mobo in case now)

I can put one stick of ram ... I can have no ram ... I can have AGP ... I can have no AGP
same result.... no beeps and no boot.

Infact I can put the reset BIOS jumper in the reset position and it does the same thing.
I can even take out the jumper and I get the same results.
from what I recall ... if the bios jumper is in the reset position the computer wouldnt even power on

Do you have a speaker hooked up to the mobo headers? If not you won't get any beeps.

Mobo has speaker on it