Windows Software RAID 5 Windows Server 2008 problems

Discussion in 'Tech Support' started by neocleous, 14 Aug 2012.

  1. neocleous

    neocleous Minimodder

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    Hi all,

    I have a Windows Homserver running WHS 2011 with six 2TB drives configured in a RAID 5 array. I woke up this morning and two of the disks are described as missing so initially I feared the worst that two of my drives had failed at once which would have been a disaster!

    The server is built around a very old Asus A8n-Sli ultra board which is an nVidia nforcce 4 ultra chipset and only had 4 SATA ports so I added in a cheap Lycom PE-103 card to add another two SATA ports and it appears the Lycom PE-103 card has failed as the drives attached to that are missing.

    Now this is a cheap card and will cost me £16 delivered to replace but the system as a whole is very old so I am thinking of re purposing a newer system that has 6 SATA ports on the mobo as my WHS but will this cause me an issues with my RAID array? I am not going to reinstall WHS just change the motherboard, CPU and RAM

    Thanks
     
  2. Burnout21

    Burnout21 Is the daddy!

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    I think you might be alright... "he says"

    As its a software RAID array its not controller based, so swapping out the board and doing a repair/rebuild it might come back.

    You were really chancing it weren't you, cheap PCI controller and the Nforce 4 chipset. BRAVE is the only word to sum that up.
     
  3. towelie

    towelie How do I Internet!!

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    Unless Windows HS is smart you will need to rebuild your home server OS or do an inplace upgrade if you are replacing the Motherboard, regarding RAID i'm pretty sure you can change the OS and the systems will pick up the array as it stored on the disks, or it's firmware based RAID.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID#Software-based_RAID

    I hope you have a back up, RAID is not a backup :)
     
  4. neocleous

    neocleous Minimodder

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    I know it's not a back up, but unfortunately I can't think of a cost effective way to back up 9TB so I took the risk.

    I think I'll be ok but it has made me realise I need to do something I just don't know what....?
     
  5. neocleous

    neocleous Minimodder

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    Good news! I rebuilt the server booted it up and it all worked windows didn't even moan about the drastic hardware change. Few!
     
  6. Margo Baggins

    Margo Baggins I'm good at Soldering Super Moderator

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    and today's luckiest man is neocleous!
     
  7. neocleous

    neocleous Minimodder

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    You are not wrong there!
     

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