Moving RAID.0 arrays to new motherboard - from Nforce4 Ultra + Sil3114

Status
Not open for further replies.
Hi folks, my MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum is GONE :dead:, and I had 5 disks on it:

Disk 1: No RAID - OS - WinXP installed
Disk 2+3: RAID.0 on Nforce4 Ultra MCP controller (onboard)
Disk 4+5: RAID.0 on Sillicon Image Sil3114 controller (onboard)

:confused: Questions are:

1- Anyone knows if ANY CURRENT Nforce/Nvidia motherboards model is RETRO COMPATIBLE with the legacy NFORCE4 controllers (with AMD Phenom CPU)?

-> In case not, any solution to access the RAID from the NForce4?

2- Since I think no new motherboards have Sillicon RAID controllers (now have AMD/NVIDIA only), anyone knows any PCI controller to attach to the new motherboard COMPATIBLE with the Sil3114? (I read that the new Sillicon controllers are generally compatible with the old ones), so I can access the Disk 4+5.

(I'm planning to migrate to AMD Phenom II X3 710 at the same time)

Thank you!

Luis :D
 
You might try buying another MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum. Yeah, I know they're old but I did a quick check on Ebay and a few were listed. They all seem to be used but it could solve your problem.
 
You might try buying another MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum. Yeah, I know they're old but I did a quick check on Ebay and a few were listed. They all seem to be used but it could solve your problem.

Yeah, but its difficult to find in Argentina, so I'm thinking on doing this, what do u think?:

1- For the Nforce4 array: Nvidia offical tech support said that all new NVIDIA RAID controllers (both NFORCE/GEFORCE) are backwards-compatible with legacy controllers like the NFORCE4 Ultra I had, so in theory, a new one should "understand" the RAID array coinfiguration metadata stored on the disks, and no information would be lost. This is as long as the RAID BIOS version of both old and new MB is 9.xx...

So in this case I'l buy a new MB with a Geforce 8200 chipset (ASUS M3N78-VN with a Phenom II 710).

The only worry is how to verify WHICH RAID BIOS version I had on the defunct MB... any idea? Is the RAID BIOS inside the MB BIOS?

2- For the Sil3114 array: I'm buying a Lycom ST-127 PCI host and connecting it on the Geforce 8200 new MB, which essentially contains the same chipset brain as the original Silicon Image 3114 I had on the MSI MB.

In this case, I'd have the same logic controller for that array...

Any thoughts? I'll keep you posted!

Thanks,
Luis
 
The only worry is how to verify WHICH RAID BIOS version I had on the defunct MB... any idea? Is the RAID BIOS inside the MB BIOS?
Yes, it is part of the motherboard BIOS. Although I have the same MSI motherboard, I don't have a RAID array set up, only a single hard drive. So sorry I'm not much help. Check the motherboard manual for the details you seek regarding your old RAID array. If you don't have a manual, you can download it from the MSI website.

You might want to reconsider using RAID in the future. If you had only single hard drives, your data recovery would be much simpler.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back