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Motherboard RAID 1 Mirroring?

Hi,

I had an curious about a point about raid on desktop
motherboards.

Ok here is the synario I install an OS on a computer
with two disks using Motherboard Raid 1 (mirroring).

So here is the question. If we then unplug that disk and
put it in another machine will it boot?

So I am thinking is there any metadata that would be written
to the disk or does it read and write exactly what
is presented by the OS?

Would the data that is written to the disk be "exactly" the same is if there was no RAID controller involved at all. (Just a single disk).

Or would I be in trouble I need to plug it back into
a raid controller?

I am thinking there could be trobule.

So I am having a bet of a bet with a friend.

Will I loose my bet :)

Thanks,

Ward

whorsfall

ASKER

My friend believes that you take one of those disks and connect it to another motherboard and boot it up. So in this case it would be connected to a non-raid controller just as a single drive.

Thanks,

Ward.

Dirk Mare

It should work, but in some cases you will have to run a repair on Windows before it will work.

Windows Vista and UP wont have driver issues.

rindi

It depends on the "RAID" controller used. If both boards use the same chip for the controller they should boot. If they don't, they won't boot.

But those built-in so called "RAID" controllers really aren't usable, they are just fake-RAID controllers, and their RAID functions should never be used as they ate highly unreliable. You should rather use your OS's built-in RAID functions. That is much more reliable, and the performance is much better too. Apart from that you can move your disks more freely between different mainboards. Be aware that also here, it depends on your OS. If you are using an OEM version of Windows, and you move that to different hardware, you will need a new license to activate the OS.

whorsfall

ASKER

Hi,

Thanks for the responses. I think my question might of been misunderstood - my fault for
not stating it more clearly.

What I wanted to find out was if when a disk is written to in a RAID 1 (mirrored) set
is if the data that goes on the disk is encoded in any way differently as opposed to
writing the same data to a disk without raid at all.

So lets take a synario which might frame my question a bit better.

1. I install Windows 8 on a machine with Motherboard RAID 1 with two hard disks
mirroed. So OS goes on Drive C:

2. I take one of the hard disks out of the machine breaking the Raid set.

3. I put that hard disk into a new machine same motherboard same everything
except this time it has just the hard disk I am transferring.
However now I connect it up to the SATA chanel 1 controller and *dont* turn
on any RAID at all.

Now what will happen will the machine boot?

Is the data that is written to either disk in a RAID1 set (in this config)
going excatly the same as if there was a single disk in the system
writing the same data.

In other words is any metadata put on this disk (and interpreted by the RAID)
controller before it handed to the OS.

So the point I was debating with my friend is this *wont* work because the RAID
card would be needed to intepret the data on the disk and translate that so the OS
can see it.

He was arguing is there is not metadata that is written and all just the standard OS
data that is written if there was no RAID involved at all.

Sorry guys I hope this question makes more sense. I appreaciate the info I have got
so far. I should of framed my question better.

Thanks,

Ward

Dirk Mare

Hi

It will boot.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

rindi

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Dirk Mare

Hi rindi

Look at Whorfall second post at point nr 3