Flashback to a while back before leaving for basic in Sept. My computer kept doing dumb things and eventually got to the point it wouldn't turn on. After trouble shooting with ASUS, it was found my mobo was dead and I was going to RMA it. Well, long story short, I didn't RMA it, bought another board on ebay, and that one didn't work even though it had a sheet included with it that it was RMA'ed and checked out fine by ASUS.

My mobo and hardware was bought a while back (ASUS m3a78t, Phenom 9950, Radeon 4870 to date it) and I would like to just build something new. Is there a way I can build a new computer and download that ASUS raid controller driver and somehow be able to read the data off those drives? Do I have to have a mobo with the same southbridge as my original? I don't care for the OS or anything, I just want to get the 1.3ish TB of data off them (2, 1TB drives). Is there an easier way to get the data off those drives, for example, plugging them into a 2-bay external HDD case/NAS?

BTW, I have tried to pull the data off those drives by hooking them up to my old comp and using some raid restore software (it was 7-8 months ago, so I can't remember what it was), but it never worked and with some other software that lets you copy everything from the two raid'ed drives onto a single 2TB drive, it said there wasn't enough room.

A quick google search reveals a data recovery service a couple miles from my house that'll retrieve data off of even damaged HDDs. If you can't figure it out and you really need what's on those drives...give it a shot.

I am not really experienced with RAID but...
From what I have read/heard you need to be using the exact same card/controller for the raid in order for it so be moved/read. So unless you're using the old set up (Mobo and software) the RAID won't be recoverable. But if you were using a RAID0 I can't imagine that the data was that crucial?

EDIT:

Looneybomber wrote:Do I have to have a mobo with the same southbridge as my original?

I would ask the people at ASUS to see if that is the case because that can make or break you...

You have to purchase the software but over the years we have used many different companies software and came to find out 'Get Data Back NTFS' is the best. You can download the demo, and give it a trial run on the drives either mounted internally or externally. This should present the data for you to look through but you won't be able to copy it over onto the new drive unless you have the full version.

Basically, it pulls up all of your file folders, and all of your data that is there for you to look through such as my docs my pics program files, etc.

Amays U G37S wrote:You have to purchase the software but over the years we have used many different companies software and came to find out 'Get Data Back NTFS' is the best. You can download the demo, and give it a trial run on the drives either mounted internally or externally. This should present the data for you to look through but you won't be able to copy it over onto the new drive unless you have the full version.

Basically, it pulls up all of your file folders, and all of your data that is there for you to look through such as my docs my pics program files, etc.

That might have been the software I used. I was able to view the folders on my drives, but most, think thousands, had hexadecimal names. It didn't break them down into the classic tree structure where you'd have one folder within another. Instead, it just listed every single folder I had. Maybe I did something wrong?

I'm not too familiar with Raid systems, but a quick search netted several possible solutions, the easiest being a software solution. But it appears to cost money and I can't seem to find much in the way of credibility of programs without looking deeper into the topic. One piece of software did standout to me as it has a 30 day trial. Apparently the trial can tell you if it will be able to read the data, but it won't let you extract it without paying for it.

http://www.runtime.org/

Another solution I ran across was using some kind of ubuntu boot cd. I don't know much about ubuntu but it apparently has the capability of reading the raid drives. The caveat is in the thread I saw this in, the guy who had the problems apparently had damaged raid drives. The guy helping him out seemed to know what he was talking about and what steps might be needed:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/25880 ... raid-setup

Lastly, I know you already tried replacing the mobo with the same model, but:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ASUS-M3A78-T-Mother ... 45fa88d096

All that said, I'm rather glad I never really tried raid now. Sounds like a headache when things go wrong.

C-Kwik wrote:All that said, I'm rather glad I never really tried raid now. Sounds like a headache when things go wrong.

Yeah once my computer started giving me problems (spontaneously shutting down) I bought a 2TB drive to back everything up onto, but by the time it got here, it was too late.

Once I get back home (I have a week left here in TX) we can start pulling my stuff out of storage and I will have to find all of my computer parts. I'll RMA my board back to ASUS and look into some of these software options again. Maybe I can find a better computer to use during the extraction process too. The one I used was kind of old, but still had SATA ports on the mobo.

*edit* I think I'll also look into some 2+ bay NAS enclosures to see if that could work. If not, I could always use a NAS.

Alrighty, just a follow up.

The software I used unsuccessfully: Get Data Back and Runtime Raid Reconstructor.

I checked into an open source raid, SnapRAID http://snapraid.sourceforge.net/
Here's what the creator had to say.

Looneybomber wrote:"You can start using SnapRAID with already filled disks."
Does this also include stripped disks (two drives in RAID0)?

amadvance wrote:Yes, SnapRAID works at filesystem level. It can use any mounted filesystem.

For RAID0, the two disks are seen as a single filesystem, so you will need a parity disk of the same size.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthre ... 348&page=3

During the move the majority of my computer parts got packed into a box. No one knows what box it's in, so we don't know if it's in a storage unit or basement. Looks like I will be building from scratch and trying out this SnapRAID to see if I can get the data off the drives. On the upside, SnapRAID is designed for home server applications, which is something I want to build in the future, and will get a taste of what it can do for when I'm ready to build my server.