i have 3 hard discs in my computer... all 3 are ide.
2 are connected to the motherboard to their appropriate ide slots. however, when i bought my newest one, there were no slots left open. so i have the 3rd disc setup as a raid disc, by itself.

will i loose all the data on the ide raid hard drive if i disconnect it from the raid, and have it replace one of the other 2 hard disks?

i want to do this because, this raid disk is my 'media' hard drive (mp3s etc). there is no linux drive for my raid controller.. making the disk more or less a waste of electricity when in linux.

i dont want to do this, of course, if it will result in loss of all my media.
tips/proof would be appreciated, thanks!

btw:
motherboard is ASUS p4p800 deluxe, with VT6410 RAID controller (if anyone DOES have a driver)

I'm not too good with raid myself, but i think it will depend on what type of raid the other drives are set up as. If the other 2 are mirrored raid then replacing 1 disk it should then rebuild the new disk with a mirror image of the other drive. If you have stripping raid then if one drives dies or is removed then all the data is lost. But like any venture that involves data, whatever you do back it up first.

the only disk setup in as raid is the 3rd (newest/media) hard drive. the only reason i plug it into the raid connection is because my other ide hard drive connections were all used up with my other 2 hard drives and cd rom.

so its just the 3rd disk in a raid config.. the disk is 160gb, so i cant back it up lol, thats why im trying to get to the bottom of it first
thanks!

Nadroj

RAid is an array of inexpensive disks . To have an array you suppose to have more than one disk on the array . Still , say you made an array with one disk , what type of raid did you use to build it , 0 ??It is software raid or hardware raid ??

I'm guessing hardware RAID. I don't know anything about RAID which is probably how I can easily understand the first post It sounds like the OP has two IDE slots in his computer but also has a hardware RAID controller. The two existing drives were already there then a third disk was bought but because there was nowhere else to put it, you just plugged it into the RAID controller and hoped for the best, right?

So essentially, if the disk is plugged into a hardware RAID controller, does it have any special partition table designated by the hardware? If it's swapped over into a standard IDE line, will it keep all it's data and work as per normal?

Am I close?

Ok you only have one drive as raid You need a minimal of 2 disks for any raid type, is this raid connection on your motherboard or a pci card? Seems strange to be able to setup a raid on a single drive.

Sorry if this is not helping much.

i know it does seem strange.
the only reason i have the hard drive plugged into the raid slot, is because i dont have any more free IDE slots.. and thats the only other option.

it isnt in any special raid config (ie 0, 0+1, etc).. its simply hooked up to it. when i boot the computer, it displays the connected raid devices, but it isnt acting as any special raid configuration.. theres a menu id have to go into during boot and actually set it up as a certain config, but i cant, obviously, because theres only the 1 raid disk (and because that isnt my purpose).

i didnt know whether this would work when i initially bought the drive and ran into the problem.. but it does work, and act like my other 2 normal ide hard drives.

im just wondering if i remove the 'raid' disk if the data on it will be destroyed if i plug it into a normal ide slot instead.

thanks

Nadroj


Ok if you have it hooked to the Raid slot , then it should be hardware raid . I have never done this but , since it is hardware raid and only one disk , you should not loose the data .But to be on the safe side you should back your data . If it was software raid I definately could tell you that you will loose the data , but since it is not the case , you should not loose it.

I am guessing but if you try to place the on the disk on where the IDE slot is , what could happen is that the disk might not be read , in that case you return the disk
to the raid slot and back up the data .

Data cost a lot of money . I always bak it up before any test .


Good luck

Ok that now makes sence, cs-cam understood what you meant. Unless you have a proper server motherboard most of these hardware raid controllers are actually a software controller, controlled by a bios chip on the motherboard.

If it's acting like a normal drive, in theory you should be able to replace the second drive with it then use liloconfig to add it to the bootloader. Unfortunately I have no experience with this type of problem so I cannot give you any firm advice.

sorry cam.. i completely missed your reply somehow when looking at the replies.. thats exactly what i did (however i built the computer, there werent 2 drives already 'there' )

thanks all..
i agree too.. it makes sense that i can just rip it out of the raid connection and have it replace one of the other 2 (smaller) ide drives, without data loss.
hopefully i can built up my strength and do this, lol

walman, i cannot back up my data because, as i said, its my media drive (~160gb) and i have nothing else that large to back up to (no dvd burner either)

feedback: SUCCESS

ok i simply unplugged it from the raid connection, and switched it to the slave IDE drive. all is well; data and drive recognized and is working fine (on windows, this drive never worked on linux)

Good to hear it was successful.

thanks fotoguy and for the input earlier (months ago)

Glad to help out