Questions bout raid ... need help

hi everybody 

i just join here cuz something just came into my mind that drives me worry to death ! 

i recently bought 2*500gb maxtor hdds and set them up as raid 0 in bios ...

and as u already know when u gonna set the hdds as raid 0 the raid manager will tell u that all data in both drives will be lost . 

my concern is what if with some accident i loose my bios settings and wanna tell the bios to set these two drives as raid0 again , will i lost my data ? or what if i want to change my mobo ? what will happen , is there a way to prevent it ? will SW raid be a different ?

i concern bout it cuz in lst 6 month i lost my bios setting twice ( my mobo is asus p5q ) , once in the middle of the bios update system crashed and i lost my bios and once my backup battery lost ! 

thnx ...

shouldn't. As long as you don't format either drive and you set them back up as raid 0 you should be fine.

thnx for reply , but i didn t quite get ur answer . 

u mean if the bios raid settings cleard off and i wanted to set them again , and if i change the mobo the data will not lost as long as i don format them ???

so why when u wanna set the raid in bios it says all data on drives will be lost ?

blind_owl:

so why when u wanna set the raid in bios it says all data on drives will be lost ?

I agree with nelson unless you tell it to format it you should,nt loose you data.Read you MB manuel see if it makes referance to it!

WHat I'm saying is if you use the same exact raid controler with the same exact MB when you set the raid function in the BIOS then it should already detect the array since they have already been set up that way. Alls you would need to do is enable the raid controler when you set all your settings in BIOS. Now if you switch MB's or raid controller you would probably have to create a new array. So basicly if your MB takes a dump, BUy the same exact MB you have now and set the BIOS to exactly what you have now and it should work just fine.

its not worth the risk for me , if i wanna buy the exact same mobo why should i change it then ?! anyway , raid 10 or 5 is outta my price range so don suggest them , 

i think i ll stick with daily backups ... :(

BTW thanks alot for clearing things out for me :)

You will NOT lose your data. That message only matters for the initial RAID setup, because some data is written to the drive to designate it as part of a RAID array. If you change you BIOS to non-raid for whatever reason, and then set it back to RAID, becuase the drives already have the designator written, they'll be fine.

Marco C:

You will NOT lose your data. That message only matters for the initial RAID setup, because some data is written to the drive to designate it as part of a RAID array. If you change you BIOS to non-raid for whatever reason, and then set it back to RAID, becuase the drives already have the designator written, they'll be fine.

yup i know that , but if i change mobo i ll loose the data right ? i read that if i even unplug , and then plug the hdds differently i ll loose data too , right ?

can anybody clear these things out for me ?

If you switch to a different motherboard that has the same RAID controller, you should be fine. Moving hard drives to a different port will also be fine (at least is has been for me on Intel and NVIDIA controllers). The only times you'll have a problem are if you switch to a new type of RAID controller, in these scenarios.

Sometimes, when you update a motherboard's BIOS, the RAID BIOS get's updated as well. Even in those situations, your array should be fine.

With that said, you should still do regular backups. WIth RAID 0, you're twice as likely to have a problem, and if either drive goes down, you'll lose everything anyway.

i spend so many hours ! backing up important data on external drive ... and still have some left to do ... 

anyway , thanks a lot for infos and just outta curiosity , in raid 5 is it possible to migrate drives to another machine with different raid controller and rebuild the array ?

I change my motherboard every year and I upgrade my computer and I never had any problems with that. I used a completely different mobo and I just told the BIOS that I am using RAID, and it automatically recognized that two of my drives are in RAID0. You will have no problem with setting up RAID0 on your hard drives.

hmmm ... i hope it be like that ...