Hi

 

  I just lost my motherboard on a 6 drive unRaid machine.  It shut itself down, I rebooted it, and while it was parity checking I made a screen cap of the drive assignments, luckily. Because it crashed again about 2% thru parity check and wont boot anymore.  So I ran off to Fry's and bought a new mobo/proc/ram and one more 2TB drive( because I'm almost out of space anyway).

 

  I got a new i3 mobo installed and running, and I precleared the 2tb, but I haven't installed any of the original drives yet.  I want to make sure of the next steps .  Specifically, I know that the new BIOS is detecting the new 2TB in IDE, not AHCI mode.  I don't know and cant tell what the old board was set for, as its dead. 

 

1)Am i going to lose data if I set it to AHCI and it was IDE mode? Is one safer than the other?

 

2)Assuming I guess the right answer for part 1, can I just reassign the 6 drives by serial number to the same slots as before, after booting ?  I noticed it listed disk 3 as unassigned, maybe because I had added the new 2TB and precleared it, but that was in SATA0 port, so not sure.

 

I am searching around forums, but have found the right info yet.  Any help is appreciated!

 

Thx

Don

1) You want to use AHCI mode within your BIOS settings. There is no data loss.

 

2) As long as you assign the drives to the same slots, you should be good to go.

 

Hi

 

   I just lost my motherboard on a 6 drive unRaid machine.   It shut itself down, I rebooted it, and while it was parity checking I made a screen cap of the drive assignments, luckily. Because it crashed again about 2% thru parity check and wont boot anymore.  So I ran off to Fry's and bought a new mobo/proc/ram and one more 2TB drive( because I'm almost out of space anyway).

 

   I got a new i3 mobo installed and running, and I precleared the 2tb, but I haven't installed any of the original drives yet.  I want to make sure of the next steps .  Specifically, I know that the new BIOS is detecting the new 2TB in IDE, not AHCI mode.  I don't know and cant tell what the old board was set for, as its dead. 

 

1)Am i going to lose data if I set it to AHCI and it was IDE mode?

No, you won't lose data with either setting.

Is one safer than the other?

Not safer but faster.   IDE is emulated IDE mode, it is likely to be slower and may limit you to using only 4 of the sata ports (2 emluated IDE controllers, each with master/slave drives)  the ACHI mode is the native mode for SATA drives.  Use it.

2)Assuming I guess the right answer for part 1, can I just reassign the 6 drives by serial number to the same slots as before, after booting ?  I noticed it listed disk 3 as unassigned, maybe because I had added the new 2TB and precleared it, but that was in SATA0 port, so not sure.

 

I am searching around forums, but have found the right info yet.  Any help is appreciated!

 

Thx

Don

Yes, assign the drives by their serial numbers back to the same logical slots in the array.  Then JUST PRESS "Start".  (might need to check the "I'm sure" box under it)  If you see any disk as un-formatted it might be your parity disk.  DO NOT FORMAT IT.  You probably have it assigned to the wrong slot in the array.

 

NOTICE.... If you had not yet assigned the new drive to the array, DO NOT ASSIGN IT UNTIL YOU ARE BACK UP AND RUNNING WITH THE ORIGINAL SET OF DRIVES.

 

Also notice, if you are running 4.5.3, DO NOT PRESS THE FORMAT BUTTON.  Upgrade to 4.5.6 first.

  I got them all reassigned and running a parity check now.  If you don't hear from me again in oh....773.7 minutes, all is well, and parity was good..lol

 

Thanks for the superfast responses!

  I got them all reassigned and running a parity check now.  If you don't hear from me again in oh....773.7 minutes, all is well, and parity was good..lol

 

Thanks for the superfast responses!

Now, I dare you to try that same trick with MS-Windows unless you use the exact same motherboard as a replacement.

 

Good that you are up and running.  Got to love the hardware independence.

  I got them all reassigned and running a parity check now.  If you don't hear from me again in oh....773.7 minutes, all is well, and parity was good..lol

 

Thanks for the superfast responses!

Now, I dare you to try that same trick with MS-Windows unless you use the exact same motherboard as a replacement.

 

Good that you are up and running.  Got to love the hardware independence.

 

Me too!

 

But although moving a Windows install can be difficult, I have had good luck with Acronis with Universal Restore.  Although it will let you migrate to a different MB/CPU, I use it to restore to a VM.  I will backup the prior install, use Acronis to restore into a VM with universal restore.  I can then boot my old configuration in a virtual machine anytime I want without dual boot.  Very handy way to transition.  I recently did just that in migrating to Windows 7.

  I got them all reassigned and running a parity check now.  If you don't hear from me again in oh....773.7 minutes, all is well, and parity was good..lol

 

Thanks for the superfast responses!

Now, I dare you to try that same trick with MS-Windows unless you use the exact same motherboard as a replacement.

 

Good that you are up and running.  Got to love the hardware independence.

 

Me too!

 

But although moving a Windows install can be difficult, I have had good luck with Acronis with Universal Restore.  Although it will let you migrate to a different MB/CPU, I use it to restore to a VM.  I will backup the prior install, use Acronis to restore into a VM with universal restore.  I can then boot my old configuration in a virtual machine anytime I want without dual boot.  Very handy way to transition.  I recently did just that in migrating to Windows 7.

 

$365 license to use Universal Restore.  Ouch.

Acronis Universal Restore for their workstation version is only $15. I have that option on a couple copies of Acronis 10 for Workstations. It's drastically cheaper than the $365 for servers.

 

Dave

Acronis Universal Restore for their workstation version is only $15. I have that option on a couple copies of Acronis 10 for Workstations. It's drastically cheaper than the $365 for servers.

 

Dave

 

Good tip.  Acronis workstation 11 is what's available now at $50 + $30 for the plus pack so it's $80 which is much cheaper.