Can I move drives if my motherboard fails?

[idata]

If my motherboard fails, can I simply place the drives on a new Matrix RAID controller on a new motherboard? Will it detect the array setup or will I have lost my data?

[idata]

Hi there,

Well to be honest, it worked fine for me using different Intel Motherboard.

If you have these features similar on the new motherboard, it will be even better

- Intel Matrix RAID BIOS Version

- Drives to be connected to the same position as it was on the original board (example drive 1 to sata port 0, drive 2 to sata port 1)

- Make sure that the drive is configured as RAID in the board bios.

- You do not have to recreate another raid array in Ctrl + I.

Note: Depending on different ICH platform and different bios version, the board may come with a new Intel Matrix Raid Bios Version. Possibly as long as they are for desktop board, it should work for most intel desktop boards.

For me, i did the test on several new Intel Board 3 and 4 Series, it worked fine without any problem.

Once i connected to the other board, the raid array was recognised and it was online.

On some system, it fails to boot onto Windows due to hardware issues, i had to re-install the OS, but all the data was intact.

Now if your data on the drives are very important, i will advise you to make a complete separate and verified backup before proceeding.

All the best,

Regards,

Aryan

[idata]

Is this a supported feature?

I want to know that my RAID 5 array will survive a motherboard failure / upgrade.

[idata]

Hello,

Yes i have done for several Intel Desktop Board. I dont know for OEM boards that use Intel chipset.

For me, it has always worked fine. Assuming that you are using Intel Matrix COntroller.

Kind Regards,

Aryan.

[idata]

Hello Rajiv,

Do you think this will work even if the Raid Array is the boot drive? What follows is a discription of my setup and plan, any advice and/or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

I currently have a Raid-5 Array consisting of 4 Western Digital (WD1600JS) 160 GB SATA Hard Drives running on a Gigabyte GA-8I945G Pro mother board, which uses the Intel 945G chipset for the Northbridge and an Intel ICH7R for the Southbridge. It is my Primary (C) hard drive containing the Operating System (Vista Home Premium SP-2 32-bit), Programs, and data. I have my data backed up to an external 500 GB PATA hard drive connected through a USB-2.0 port. I currently back up all data once a week. Everything is working perfectly and has been for 5 years.

I feel that it's time to upgrade the motherboard so that I can start to slowly upgrade peripherals such as optical drives, memory, video boards, external backup drives and such. I wish I was able to do it all at once but that is not an option for me in the current economy.

My plan is to replace the Motherboard first with a Gigabyte GA-EP45T-USB3P which has an Intel P45 as the Northbridge and an Intel ICH10R as the Southbridge.

The problem of course is the RAID-5 Array. I am under the impression that I can swap the motherboards, plug in my current SATA hard drives (RAID-5 Array) and when the system fails to boot because of the Southbridge change, do a repair install of Vista, which is 'suppose' to contain the Intel raid drivers, and all should be fine. But after 34 years of being a computer hobbyist I know better, so I want to plan for unforeseen problems.

For my backup plan if the above fails, I have purchased a 1TB WD SATA drive and will be able to hook it up to my machine via USB. I would like to be able to 'clone' the RAID-5 Array to it, with the hope that if the Vista repair install goes badly I'll be able to reinitialize the Raid Array for the new ICH10R controller, then copy the 'clone' to it using a premade boot disk with appropriate software on it. I have no idea if that will work and if it does what the best product to use to do it would be. I'm hoping that the free Western Digital version of Acronis True Image will do it.

If both of the above methods fail I can always reinstall Vista and all other programs and then restore my data from my current Windows back-up. (I really don't want to do that).

Thanking you in advance for your help