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Well, after rebuilding my PC two weeks ago because of a hard drive crash, today I was in the middle of writing an important e-mail when I heard a loud "POP" and the machine just went dead.  Couldn't get it to power back up at all.  So I run down to Best Buy and get a new power supply.  Home again and installed.  Still won't power up.  Looks like I've fried something good!  Not really wanting to spend any more money (I'll return the power supply) and seeing a fantastic opportunity to upgrade, I take my wife's very sage advice and order a new PC.  I'm getting an Intel i7-930 quad-core, 16GB RAM, 1.5TB RAID 1 HDDs, 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770 video card, Blu ray player, DVD player, wireless keyboard and mouse.

Since I was using RAID 1 in my old PC, I was only backing up once a week to a separate internal drive.  I don't know if I'll be able to put my old drives in the new machine and actually have it boot up (different drivers and all), but I'm going to try that so that I don't lose all work between Sunday and today.  Otherwise I'll have to settle for restoring my back up from Sunday.

The build date is December 21 and I got free two-day shipping, so if all goes well, it will arrive just in time for Christmas.

Just what I wanted to do.....rebuild a second time in three weeks!   

That happened to me a few years ago. I was on my computer watching something on youtube and there was a loud bang and smoke started to come out of the computer.

I've had batteries inside my cordless mouse rupture twice. Once I actually felt the pop from beneath it.

Sounds like a nice system you're getting.

Quote from: Hal on December 17, 2010, 03:57:25 AMI don't know if I'll be able to put my old drives in the new machine and actually have it boot up (different drivers and all), but I'm going to try that so that I don't lose all work between Sunday and today.  Otherwise I'll have to settle for restoring my back up from Sunday.

With a device like this: you wouldn't have to do this.

Don't know how it's called in English, but it's for temporarily connecting HDDs to a USB-plug. Your HDD works like an external HDD then and data can easily be secured.
The device costs about € 20 here and is worth every Cent of it.

I have one of those devices too. While not used very often, it surely comes in über-handy when needed

Do you know if that device works with two drives set up as RAID 1 (mirrored)?  Or since they are mirrored, can I just hook up one of them and still recover all of my data.  Seems like I should be able to.

Quote from: Hal on December 17, 2010, 03:37:11 PM
Do you know if that device works with two drives set up as RAID 1 (mirrored)?  Or since they are mirrored, can I just hook up one of them and still recover all of my data.  Seems like I should be able to.

"Mirrored" shouldn't be a problem, since the HDDs are independent of each other and both contain exactly the same data.
Problems arise with a RAID 0 (Striped Set) though, here it normally isn't even possible to transplant the HDDs into another PC (without complete data-loss) if you don't get out the RAID-controller too.

Actually, if it's "proper" RAID, you still need to proceed with caution and while those IDE>USB adaptors are awesome, I wouldn't be surprised if it didn't work.

Whatever system you use for RAID, it has to store parity information in the table so the drivers know how to interface (as far as Windows is concerned, it is being tricked into seeing the wrong number of drives; physical versus logical, etc). The existence of that parity data and the need for RAID drivers may mean that another system won't recognise the drive as it will appear as an invalid format.

There's absolutely a chance it will work because what Michael says is essentially true, but as I say...beware.

Well, I'll keep my fingers crossed.  The new PC is by the same manufacturer and will come with it's two HDDs set up with RAID 1 also.

I think I'm first going to try to just install one of the "old" drives in the new machine internally and see if I can recover the data.

Like I said, worst case I'll be able to restore back to Sunday.

I'll let everyone know how it goes next week sometime.  In the meantime, I'm stuck with using my wife's notebook.  I just have to squint at the teeny, tiny screen.  Getting old sucks!   

Can you read this, old timer? 

On one hand it's a benefit it being the same RAID manufacturer. On the other, I doubt you could boot from your drive and if you put it in as secondary, it'll get wiped and mirrored with the primary. You know, it might be worth running it by the supplier. They probably have high-end machines lying around capable of reading a second RAID array as data. Or set a USB drive as the boot and the RAID as data, thereby allowing your old disk to be installed safely.

Worth asking. If a customer asked me, it wouldn't be any skin off my nose for a five minute job.

Just thought I'd update everyone on my plight.  I got the new computer only to find out that there was no room in the drive cage to add a third hard drive, so my plan to just stick one of my RAID mirrored drives in the new machine didn't exactly work out.

So, Plan B.  I noticed two connectors on the back of the new machine that were labeled eSATA, or external SATA.  So....., I ordered an external SATA enclosure for $36, which came yesterday.  I  popped out one of the old RAID drives, installed it in the new enclosure in about 2 minutes, hooked it up to the eSATA port on the new machine (cable included) and presto, it worked like a champ.   

I've been able to recover all of my data and reinstall all of my apps with lightening speed.  The new machine really rips!   

I  may order a second external enclosure and hook up the other old RAID drive to add a total of 3TB of external storage to the 1.5TB of internal drive space.  That should hold me for awhile.

Now to rebuild the old machine for my mom.....

Quote from: Hal on December 31, 2010, 05:08:29 AMI  may order a second external enclosure and hook up the other old RAID drive to add a total of 3TB of external storage to the 1.5TB of internal drive space.  That should hold me for awhile.

Get an NAS enclosure. At least if you have more than one PC at home. This way the HDD wil be accessible from all PCs in your local network.

Quote from: Silence_of_Lambs on December 31, 2010, 10:15:25 AM
Get an NAS enclosure. At least if you have more than one PC at home. This way the HDD wil be accessible from all PCs in your local network.

I am toting with that idea too. I only really have one computer at this time, but I suppose my PS3, iPad and the iPhone might benefit as well. I looked at some options but couldn't make a decision yet.

A nice one in a very low budget sector is the LogiLink 2-Bay NS0046 NAS System
It supports 2 3.5" HDDs up to 4 Gigs (2 Gig each) and suffices for a home network.


The single-bay version is the NS0045