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Coverting software RAID to basic disk.

I have a Windows 2003 server that the motherboard died. I had (2) 1TB drives software RAID 1 Mirrored, when I put one of them in my Windows 7 PC to get the data it shows up as a Dynamic Disk - Invalid. My options are to Reactivate Disk or Convert to Basic Disk. Can I do this without losing any data? Thanks.

Elvorfin

Do you have another computer that has the same motherboard or a replacement motherboard that is the same? I have successfully swapped a stripped raid disk pair from one Dell workstation to another of the same type, both running the same software RAID controller. When i powered up the second workstation the disks came up like nothing had happened.

Also have you tried booting a PC from one of your mirrored disks?

chriswolf

ASKER

The disks were just data drives no OS on them. No the board is so old I don't have another one. They were just setup using Windows Software RAID they weren't on a controller card.

Gerwin Jansen

I would not risk converting to basic, here's some info about reactivating: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc786948(v=WS.10).aspx

arnold

Presuming that it was a raid 1 configuration, the second drive is the backup. Alternatively, if it was not a raid 1, you should consider imaging the dynamic disk for purposes of backup.
Then you can attempt to reactivate the dynamic disk on the windows 7 system to see the contents.

denim_dan

Have you tried accessing the data from a Linux machine? Or even by booting from a Linux boot CD? I have had pretty solid luck with this method when Windows cannot read data for some reason or another.

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chriswolf

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chriswolf

ASKER

I tried all of the comments but ended up having to use a recovery program to solve my problem.