• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Switch from JMicron RAID to Intel RAID - Transparent?

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

BigBlake

New Member
Joined
Mar 11, 2008
Greetings,

I've built a RAID1 array using Gigabyte RAID (JMicron JMB36X). It's working great, except for one thing ("random" BSOD while formatting large partitions), so I'd like to try using the on-board Intel RAID (ICH9) to see if that helps.

I'm a RAID newbie. Does anyone happen to know--If I simply plug my two JMicron-created HDDs into the Intel RAID SATA ports, will the Intel RAID controller recognize them? I.e., is RAID disk layout (headers and such) a standard across vendors, or does each vendor implement their own (incompatible) layout?

Thanks for any insight you can provide!

System:
Gigabyte P35-DS4 rev2.1
Q6600 2.4GHz, 4GB G.Skill DDR2
2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 500GB as RAID1
Asus GeForce 8500GT 512MB GDDR3 PCIe
Antec Solo case, Nexus NX-8040 400W Silent PSU
 
You will most likely have to setup the RAID config again on the ICH9. Besides that, you will get better performance on the ICH9 over the Jmicron controller.
 
You will most likely have to setup the RAID config again on the ICH9.

Thanks bchur, that's what I was afraid of, but it's certainly good to know.

(The problem is that I've already installed the OS and apps on the JMicron volume. Ugh.)

Thanks again. I'll keep this thread updated with my progress. If anyone else knows of a way to interchange JMicron and Intel, please let me know. (Or, if you know of an easy way to preserve the HDD image I've already spent time preparing, so that I can recreate the drive on ICH9 and then restore directly to where I am now....)
 
Thanks bchur, that's what I was afraid of, but it's certainly good to know.

(The problem is that I've already installed the OS and apps on the JMicron volume. Ugh.)

Thanks again. I'll keep this thread updated with my progress. If anyone else knows of a way to interchange JMicron and Intel, please let me know. (Or, if you know of an easy way to preserve the HDD image I've already spent time preparing, so that I can recreate the drive on ICH9 and then restore directly to where I am now....)
If you want to make the switch successfully, you'll want to enable the Intel controller in the BIOS, install the Intel RAID drivers when Windows recognizes new hardware, then image the current OS setup to another single drive or whatever, put the drives on the Intel ports and create an array, reimage the OS to the Intel RAID array which will boot fine since the drivers are already installed in the image. Do you have an imaging program or are you noting your "image" is your current OS/app installation on the JMicron?
 
Do you have an imaging program or are you noting your "image" is your current OS/app installation on the JMicron?

Thanks tr, I'm thinking of trying out your suggestion. I don't have an imaging program yet, but I'll get one. (Suggestions welcome. Freeware preferred. :) )
 
Okay, I followed tuskenraider's advice, and it worked perfectly. Just wanted to follow up here with some details, which someone might find helpful in the future.

noegruts, thanks for the DriveImage XML suggestion. I installed it, but only had limited success getting it to correctly image my sytem drive. It's nice software for its price, :) but it definitely still contains some careless/buggy code. (E.g., I was not once able to get a successful "Drive to Drive" copy. And right after the message telling me that it had failed, a second pop-up proclaimed success. :eh?: )

I was getting ready to pay for better imaging software (Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage) when I stumbled upon a free drive cloning tool from Seagate. It turns out that it's really just a rebranded (and maybe pared-down) version of Acronis TrueImage, which Seagate makes available for free if you own a Seagate drive. (Luckily(?), my drives are Seagate Barracudas.)

Seagate DiscWizard worked wonderfully. (Props to Acronis.) Steps I took, for the curious:

0) Enabled Intel RAID in the BIOS, to ensure that ICH9R drivers were loaded.

1) Cloned my JMicron RAID-1 drive onto another, single non-RAID disk. (DiscWizard made this easy.)

2) Tested bootability of the new single drive. Confirmed that boot into OS worked.

3) Disconnected the pair of drives from JMicron SATA mobo headers, and reconnected them to Intel SATA headers. Added them to a new Intel RAID-1 array.

NOTE 1: This was The Point of No Return for me; by creating the new Intel RAID array, I was losing the existing data on those drives. If I'd had more drives in hand, I could have mitigated this by using new drives in the Intel array instead of my old JMicron pair. (Just one spare drive would've been sufficient, since if everything went sour, I could have always rebuilt the JMicron array from one of its old drives.)

NOTE 2: I had to connect my single, newly created clone drive to an *Intel* SATA header, and NOT to the *JMicron* SATA header. I tried JMicron first, but DiscWizard failed to recognize that the Intel RAID disk was a Seagate disk. (And DiscWizard only runs if there's a Seagate disk on the system.) Had to shut down and connect the single drive to an Intel header instead of JMicron. Alternatively, DiscWizard, upon finding no Seagate drives, offered me the option to purchase Acronis at a discounted rate. How generous of them. ;)


4) Used DiscWizard to clone the single disk to the new Intel RAID array.

5) Crossed fingers and booted from the newly cloned Intel RAID array. Success!

Thanks to all who helped. Your advice was invaluable in helping me to think through the problem.

FINAL NOTE 1: Some disheartening news: While formatting a large partition on the new Intel RAID-1 array, Intel's MSM console reported that one of the disks in my array had failed! WTF? Unlikely. I think that the drives were just too busy, and they didn't respond to the RAID controller fast enough, causing it to freak out. I rebuilt the array, and 5 hours later things were back to normal. But I'm a little nervous about how temperamental and precarious the array seemed. I should also point out that I'm using 7200.11 ST3500320AS, and not the ES.2 ST3500320NS which might be geared more for RAID use. Not sure, after reading reviews on Newegg, which would actually be a better/safer choice.

FINAL NOTE 2: FYI, it turns out that each disk of my JMicron RAID-1 array was usable as a plain ol' non-RAID disk without any modification. I had always wondered whether this was true--whether I could pop a RAID-1 disk out of its array and have it be recognized by a non-RAID controller. Maybe this is implementation dependent, but at least it does work with the JMicron JMB36X.
 
Glad that worked out for you.....hopefully. The drives you have should present no problem in RAID. The question is what was causing the BSOD's on the JMicron and now that you've already had an "issue" on the Intel side, that may be a symptom of being affected too. If you still have the image available on the single drive, you might want to run drive diagnostics on them(have to be non-RAID config) to make sure both pass and then you can reimage again.
 
FINAL NOTE 2: FYI, it turns out that each disk of my JMicron RAID-1 array was usable as a plain ol' non-RAID disk without any modification. I had always wondered whether this was true--whether I could pop a RAID-1 disk out of its array and have it be recognized by a non-RAID controller. Maybe this is implementation dependent, but at least it does work with the JMicron JMB36X.

I believe that any disk that is in a Raid1 array can be removed and used in this way on another PC... not just ones on a JMicron controller.
 
Back