I have 4 hard drives that formed a RAID 10 array created on a Windows PC with an Intel raid controller. That old PC is long gone but I still have the drives from that array.

Now I have a laptop running Linux (no hardware RAID controller) and I'd like to find a way to read the data from those old drives. I've managed to assemble the array using

mdadm --assemble

but the array is listed as 'inactive' in /proc/mdstat

when I use

mdadm --examine

on the array it tells me:

mdmon: /dev/md0 is not attached to Intel(R) RAID controller

I'm pretty much a Linux noob. I'm trying to retrieve the data without having to buy a new desktop/hardware RAID controller. Please let me know if you need any additional information.

Thank you.

I'd say you are basically out of luck. The Intel firmware will control how the data are laid out on the physical media - mdadm will only see its logical layout and will access the data via APIs Intel publishes.
Given that it's a) a proprietary format, and b) RAID10, I'd reckon you can't even use a forensic scraping tool to recover (complete) files.

All guesswork on my behalf, so I hope some-one else can chime in and prove me wrong.

1 members found this post helpful.

I do not have any RAID hardware myself, but I am going to guess on general principles that you need to mount the RAID device /dev/md0 .Have a look at the man page for mount, and for RAID. They will probably be usefull in this respect.

Darren,

Unfortunately, I'm unable to mount the assembled array. I get the same-ish error: "/dev/md0 is not attached to Intel(R) RAID controller."

I suspect syg00 is correct which is why I can see all the logical information for each drive but I'm unable do anything with the array.

If there's no software workaround it seems my only solution is to hook the devices up to a hardware controller. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with a laptop without one. Does anyone know of an EXTERNAL Inter Raid Controller on the market or an internal card that can be jerry-rigged
somehow to work with a laptop and 4 external HDDs?

Cheers,

Michael

The Intel RAID controller is a hardware card, therefore, when you accessed the disks you're actually only speaking to "Virtual disk(s) via the card, Any RAID setup was implemented by "talking" to the card (Usually some hot key sequence during the POST tests) The individual disks are not accessible directly from the OS. I'm not sure if the RAID encryption on every manufacturers hardware card is the same but in the event of failure replacing like with like should work, especially those with removable cache cards. Note that each disk gets a small partition generated which contains config information used by the RAID card when it is initialised.

This means that trying to read disks initialised in a hardware RAID is, as syg00 mentions above, very probably impossible by using a software solution.

I'm impressed that it's smart enough to identify how it was created and what you need to read it though!

Play Bonny!

1 members found this post helpful.

I'm thinking out loud here. Basically as above.

If a hardware (real hardware) array was configured in the raid bios then it should be visible at boot time using the key sequence. Think it should appear to all supported OS's as what it is. Mdadmn isn't the correct tool for hardware arrays is it?

I'd agree with both moderators. Basically, you lose.

One way just might be (presuming you have a linux box and everything) to install virtualbox or some such, install the card; tell linux to ignore it, tell windows to pick it up and load the driver. Personally, If I absolutely needed data, I'd pay a professional. If I didn't, I'd reformat.

Nope, I don't think so. If a disk fails in a hardware RAID you'll usually get some sort of indication (amber led on the failed disk.) When you pop it out as it'll generally be hot swap, the RAID card will control the rebuild of the replacement one without any CPU overhead. Mdadmn's soft RAID will use the system CPU to control the rebuild. Big difference!

Play Bonny!