In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage MC wrote:
I had a motherboard with a built in IDE RAID Promise chipset. I used
two drives for RAID 0 (now I know this was a bad idea). To make a
long story short, the system board is shot and I can't get another
with the same RAID chipset. Even if I throw the computer out, I really
need to save my data. My questions a

1) If I get another system with a PCI RAID card or IDE RAID chipset on
the motherboard that is not Promise RAID chipset, will my existing
drives work without reformating? (i.e. I can get my data off. I don't
need to boot or anything else).

Forget it.

2) If I just get a new computer (or borrow someones) with normal IDE,
can I plug in my 2 drives as the the 2nd and 3rd drive and use
software RAID (like in Win2000) to get at my data?

NO. RAID from different manufacturers are usually (and I think
intentionally) incompatible. It is not the data arrangement on the
disk, but the descriptor block that stores meta information.

Incidentially that is one of the strong arguments for software-RAID,
since you can access it with entirely different hardware as long
as the software can still be installed.

Best option: Ask Promise tech support which of their products can
read your disks and then get that.

Arno
--
For email address: lastname AT tik DOT ee DOT ethz DOT ch
GnuPG: ID:1E25338F FP:0C30 5782 9D93 F785 E79C 0296 797F 6B50 1E25 338F
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws" - Tacitus