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General discussion

PC died. Can I convert internal raid drives to external?

Jun 26, 2006 10:40PM PDT

The unfortunate happended to me over the weekend. I believe either my motherboard (Asus P4T533-C) or CPU chip (Pentium 4 2.Cool died since my PC won't boot/POST.

My hard drives (2 Western Digital 120GB 7200RPM Hard Drives; 8MB Cache) are raid configured (no array; the drives act as a single drive) using a HighPoint RAID Controller Card (Rocketraid 133; a 2-channel ATA133 RAID adapter). Does anyone have any suggestions about whether I can put the two drives in an external enclosure and still access them using another PC (or an IMAC)? I see a number of external enclosures that appear to be designed to accomidate raid drives but it is unclear with me if these will work.

Thanks for any help.

Discussion is locked

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Such do work, but your question may be ...
Jun 26, 2006 10:45PM PDT

"Will they show my existing data files?"

The answer from my experience is no. I've yet to see many RAID arrays survive even when we move the drives to the same chipset and controllers. This is a testament to the addage "we only lose what we don't backup."

But those external RAID capable NAS boxes do work.

Bob

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PC died. Can I convert internal raid drives to external?
Jun 26, 2006 10:50PM PDT

That is what I fear. Luckly I backed up about 80% of the data on an external hard drive about 7 months ago. Of course, it was a one time thing so everything for the last 7 months has not been backed up.

What is an external RAID capable NAS? Is it worth giving this option a shot? If so, what are my options? Any particular brand/model that is reasonably priced.

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Just noting.
Jun 26, 2006 11:17PM PDT

This is a world wide forum. What I can get here in the USA may not be found in Australia. You can use the usual search engines to find these products and then toss them up for comment by members.

To recover your lost files, the only method I find to work well is to repair the failed machine. Could be cheap.

Bob

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if you use the same controller card
Jun 27, 2006 11:50AM PDT

you can probably recover your array. put the card and drives in another pc and check if the controller card can still 'see' the raid volume. if the card can't recognize it, neither will any other setup.

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I'll second Bob's suggestion...might be as simple as
Jun 27, 2006 1:54PM PDT

replacing the power supply.

Get a Power Supply Tester for $12-$15...like the one by CoolMax or UltraX. I just helped replace the power supply in my daughter's PC....it started acting up and then just died. Replaced the PS and all was well.

Hoping same for you...let us know.

VAPCMD