General Discussions

[prosupam]

I have finally managed to set up a Raidexpert2 based HDD raid 1 on a 5900X/B550. Windows 10 runs on a separate NVMe PCIe4.0 SSD. There were many issues and the overall experience was not pleasant. It is now running quite well, and I started to feel happy. 

While I was at this, with brand new system and no critical data yet on it, I decided to test what happens in case of problem. I faked a MB out of service and the need to move my disks to another system. Good idea to check this apparently because ... I simply could not succeed. 

As opposed to Intel RST raid solution it seems the AMD raidexpert2 raid 1 solution is QUITE proprietary. I could not find any documentation on what kind of stuff happens in an AMD simple RAID 1. Going the experimental way, I found that extracted AMD raid 1 disks cannot be read on simple AHCI configuration.  I also tried to connect the disk to a linux based nas : file system not recognized and on several other RAID system: file system not recognized, through a USB external HDD case : file system not recognized. In all cases, the sytems recognize the disk itself but nothing of what is in it.

Some recovery software seem to be able to overcome those issues. So far, I did not decide to pay the license fee and cannot confirm they would work all the way. While testing the free trial versions, I found that they mention some LINUX stuff (I am using windows and never had any linux installation around except in my NAS). So it would seem that AMD 4 B550 is using some linux file system stuff down below while window operates NTFS on top?!?!?!? What a confusing situation...

By comparison, extracted intel RST raid 1 single disk can be immediately read on any AHCI configuration and virtually anything...Intel is right : the whole purpose of simple RAID 1 is to make sure that the data is protected as much as can be. That should include disks that are easy to read individually in the most standard possible way in every sytem.

I am sure AMD sees it the same way. So there must be a procedure to read an AMD RAID 1 single disk when extracted from its original AMD RAIDEXPERT2 B550 system.

Does anyone know how to read a disk that has been extracted from a  B550 RAID 1?

[Thanny]

Based on a quick search, I think I'd be able to do it manually, but only with low-level partition table fiddling.  It's not a matter of a proprietary file system, but a proprietary disk layout, with the partition table out of its normal position.  Creating matching partitions with a partition table editor would probably be the simplest way to get access to the volume, but you'd need to find the correct partition start and end points first.  The way I'd do it myself would be to find the volume start and end positions, then copy that data to a new drive at the correct position for a newly-created partition (using dd in Linux, most likely).

I don't know of any user-friendly ways of doing it.

[prosupam]

Thanks a lot Thanny.
I am afraid that you are right. This is way below expectations from AMD. Who wants a RAID 1 without the option to recover the data easily anywhere... At the very least, AMD should offer a software recovery tool.

Since I am now stuck on this platform for some years, my only hope is that AMD will indeed post such software. Honestly, it can't be that hard to do. A matter of user centricity... ?