SpinRite 6.1 penetrating RAID?

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SecretStasher

Member
Feb 14, 2023
11
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I think I recall Steve mentioning several years ago that a future version of SpinRite would be capable of piercing "thin" RAID.

I remember understanding at the time that this might mean that, when using Onboard RAID (rather than a standalone RAID card), it might be possible to get SpinRite to scan the individual drives directly rather than having to rewire them and/or reconfigure the BIOS. I'm not sure whether I was understanding correctly, and even if I was, this might no longer be true, or it might have been referring to SpinRite 7.x.

I'm running two-drive RAID-1 mirroring using BIOS-based onboard RAID. Anyone know whether, with SpinRite 6.1, I will be able to run SpinRite on the individual drives under my current configuration without any rewiring or BIOS reconfiguration?
 
If the BIOS will show separate drives to DOS, SpinRite will see them as separate drives. I imagine it doesn't do this, so neither will SpinRite 6.1. Who knows what features SpinRite 7.x will bring? Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll know some time in 2025.
 
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In this case with bIOS RAID you either would have the RAID show up as a single drive, with possibly the actual drives showing up as another set of drives, or it is totally hidden. If BIOS sees individual drives SR will run on the actual drives, and do each one in turn. If it does not show the drives at all you would need to first record details of the RAID configuration, then undo the RAID, reboot, and run SR to do each drive separately, and then redo the RAID setup using the stored parameters. In any case you really want to have a backup that works first, as RAID is not a backup.
 
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