Yo!

I have just bulit a new PC based on an Asus P5GD1 mobo.

Connected to this is 2x 250Gb HDDs connected via 2 of the available 4 SATA interfaces and 2x Pioneer DVR108 DVD drives connected using normal IDE cables.

From an existing PC I had a (slave) 20Gb HDD (NON SATA) with tons of video apps on that I want to use on my new PC. Knowing nothing of RAID drives I connected this to one of the RAID ports (obviously via IDE cable). Why? Because there were no other available IDE ports for me to use. To my surprise it worked OK ...............

...........until I added a file to this drive. Now the drive is not auto-detected!

Now to my questions:
Have I completely buggered the information on this disk?
I know you can (possibly) connect single drives to RAID as an array of a single disk - but what are the implications of doing this with a disk that already has data on it? Will the system insist on partitioning / formatting / whatever the 'new' disk when connected?

My knowledge of RAID is utterly nowt.

Thanks in advance,

Andy

Since this is a RAID oriented Mobo, and both your SATA and your Ultra 133 controllers are RAID controllers, this may be impractical, but if possible I'd wait til after retrieving my files to learn about RAID.

What do you mean when you say "I connected this to one of the RAID ports". The way I read it all of your drive ports are RAID ports. Have you modified BIOS to change that for some of them? Is this a serial ATA or a ATA drive? (Is it connected to one of the four SATA ports or to one of the two ATA 133 channels?)

Are you using a single ATA U 133 connector to support both of your DVD drives, or are they each on their own connector and cable? If there is an unused ATA U 133 connector on a cable with one of those drives that may let it be recognized as a slave, and let you move your files to one of your new drives until you have made sure using the drive on your new system does not require reformatting it.

If this is an ATA drive, not a SATA drive, have you considered putting it on one of the ATA Ultra 133 connectors being used by your DVD drives, temporarily? Or is that where it is now?

The drive controllers, and the BIOS for the mobo should be documented by ASUS. That documentation, and folks (at the ASUS forum http://vip.asus.com/forum/bbs.aspx?SLangua...-us&model=P5GD1 ?) familiar with the mobo might be a good place to check.

Sorry, I see now that your drive is ATA, on an IDE cable. Still curious about whether it's on its own cable, or sharing with one of the two DVD's, but actually see no reason that would make a difference.

Also wonder if you've gotten into your setup far enough to know which of the three available RAID modes your ATA 133 channels are set up for.

Do you have the machine your 20Gb drive came from still running? Is the drive still recognized on that machine? Can you backup the files from it there?

Hi Jim, thanks for your interest....

The 20Gb drive is on its own unique cable plugged into one of 2 red RAID port connectors on the mobo. Nothing else is connected to the other red RAID port.

I have not even touched the BIOS - I'm therefore guessing it must be set to RAID0 - otherwise the drive would never have been seen in the first place during the autodetect process during boot.



The original PC is my work PC. I'll give the 20Gb drive a try on that machine when the boss is away next week.

It's been a while since I last built a PC, pre- SATA, RAID and even ATX PSUs / cases! The only confusing thing to me is RAID which I would have stayed clear of if it were not for the niceity of possibly including the 20Gb HDD in the build.

Cheers,

Andy