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Thread: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

  1. #21
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    Re: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    Sorry for the thread necro, but I need help in these regards.

    I have a software RAID 0 created in Vista (2x259GB Samsung drives), and I need to mount it in Ubuntu.

    I'm using 9.04 (the latest).

    I followed Martigen's instructions on the first page and it all goes smoothly until I need to mount the new 'drive', where it tells me it can't find an NTFS partition (or somewhere along those lines).

    There has to be a way for me to do this, as I can't really afford to lose the data on those drives in a format (and I have no means to back them up)

  2. #22
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    Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal

    Re: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    9.04 the latest may not be the best in this regard.

    Presuming you have a MB raid controller and you want to retain interoperabily with windows you would be using using dmraid referred to as a 'fakeraid'. Don't let the term throw you. To see it in ubuntu you need open a terminal and run:

    sudo apt-get install dmraid -y

    then if the install was successful continue with

    sudo dmraid -ay

    At this point you will see the results in /dev/mapper. I myself am stuck with the next step to mount the raid partitions automatically in ubuntu 9.04. In 8.10 I merely edited the /dev/fstab as sudo to link the symbolic links you see in /dev/mapper automatically to mount points created for that purpose. If you are using 8.10 I can tell you how to do this. If it is 9.04, I am still trying to figure that out! At this point you can do it manually with a mount command:

    mount /dev/mapper/<your raid partition entry> /media/<whatever you want to call it>

    It can do no harm to try it and see if it works.
    12.10 Quantal w/grub2/Mint13 installed on raid0, Gigabyte AMD MB, AMD 64x4 CPUs at 3.2GHz, 16 GB ram, HD7770 ATI video, dual boot win7 on 64gb ssd and win8 on 1Tb SATA raid. 13.04 installed on raid0 and ssd

  3. #23
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    May 2009
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    Re: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    Quote Originally Posted by Martigen View Post
    Piffle, this is Linux, anything is possible

    Bob -- yes you can, I do it myself. But as a less-than-common scenario there's no user-friendly tool to make it easy.

    The Linux kernel includes the 'md' (multiple disk) driver to manage Linux software RAID devices. What isn't common knowledge is that Windows software RAID uses an identical structure, bar superblocks (don't worry about these for now). So, Linux being awesome as it is, can in fact mount Windows software RAID devices -- as long as you tell it where they are (and that's where superblocks come in for Linux, enabling auto-building arrays).

    Here'a a quick how-to:

    1. First make sure you've got the 'mdadm' tools installed:
    Code:
    sudo apt-get install mdadm
    2. Now determine the partitions being used for your Windows array. If you know these already, great, if not check your partitions like so:
    Code:
    cat /proc/partitions
    On my system, for example, I get:
    Code:
    major minor  #blocks  name
    
    [...output cut...]
    
       8    32  146523384 sdc
       8    33   10485760 sdc1
       8    34   10483712 sdc2
       8    35  125548544 sdc3
       8    48  146523384 sdd
       8    49   10485760 sdd1
       8    50   10483712 sdd2
       8    51  125548544 sdd3
    For me, my Windows RAID array is built from /dev/sdc2 and /dev/sdd2 (my sdc1 and sdd1 are my Linux RAID boot)

    3. Start the array with mdadm, create a directory to mount it, and then mount it:
    Code:
    sudo mdadm --build /dev/md0 --chunk=64 --level=0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdd2 /dev/sdc2
    sudo mkdir /media/Windows
    sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/md0 /media/Windows
    And that's it! The new 'Windows' mount will appear on your desktop to access.

    Helpful stuff to know

    * Make sure Windows was shutdown cleanly before booting Linux. If not, both the array and mounting with NTFS will likely refuse to work.
    * If an array still won't build (an error is reported), try swapping the devices around -- for eg '/dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd2' instead of '/dev/sdd2 /dev/sdc2'. The order they are used to build the array is important.
    * Windows software RAID actually uses a chunk size of 128k, but the Linux md driver wants to know the chunk size per device in the array, and so we use 64. You can actually build it with 128 too, but if you mount it you'll see missing files and directories (and whatever you do, do not write to it in this mode!)
    * The 'mdadm' command comes with an --assemble option, but this is for super-block (Linux based) arrays. Hence we use --build which will assemble arrays regardless of superblocks and on the assumption the user knows what they are doing (and, in this case, allows us to mount Windows arrays).
    * Run 'cat /proc/mdstat' to see the active arrays on your system.

    Finally you said you have two RAID 0 arrays -- don't forget to increment '/dev/md0' to '/dev/md1' for your second array, and create another directory to mount it on, so you can access both arrays from your desktop.
    This does not work for windows sortware raid5 arrays:

    home@venux:~$ sudo mdadm --build /dev/md0 --chunk=64 --level=5 --raid-devices=4 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 /dev/sdf1 /dev/sdg1
    mdadm: Raid level 5 not permitted with --build.

    Can someone advice me how to access win software raid5 in ubuntu (10.04) without destroying the existing data?

    My setup looks like this:

    home@venux:~$ cat /proc/partitions
    major minor #blocks name

    8 0 156290904 sda
    8 1 81923436 sda1
    8 2 1 sda2
    8 5 71288406 sda5
    8 6 3076416 sda6
    8 16 80043264 sdb
    8 17 80035798 sdb1
    8 32 293057352 sdc
    8 33 293049666 sdc1
    8 48 312571224 sdd
    8 49 312567808 sdd1
    8 64 312571224 sde
    8 65 312567808 sde1
    8 80 312571224 sdf
    8 81 312567808 sdf1
    8 96 312571224 sdg
    8 97 312567808 sdg1

    It confuses me that array disks are shown twice. I suppose one is drive and second is volume.
    I admit that i have no idea.

    thanx

  4. #24
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    Jul 2006
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    Re: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    Thanks for the info, it works on a software RAID0 I set up in Windows 7. It didn't work at first, but I had to change the order from:

    Code:
    sudo mdadm --build /dev/md0 --chunk=64 --level=0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1
    to

    Code:
    sudo mdadm --build /dev/md0 --chunk=64 --level=0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdb1
    For the record, nothing broke when I set it up wrong first and tried to mount the file system. I even tried with 128kb chunks before changing the order, and that didn't break anything either.

    Anyway, now I'd like to set this up so it mounts automatically. I've been reading the mdadm.conf man page, but can't find anywhere to specify the chunk size. Has anyone done this?

  5. #25
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
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    North Texas
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    Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal

    Re: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    Quote Originally Posted by k999 View Post
    Anyway, now I'd like to set this up so it mounts automatically.
    I'd like to do this as well. Setting up and mounting the raid works great, but it's such a pain to have to do this every time I start up. Any way to automate this?

  6. #26
    Join Date
    Jul 2012
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    17

    can I mount my WinXP software SPAN array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    Since this 4 yr. old thread was resurrected as recently as last year, I don't feel too bad bringing it up again

    I finally decided to make the switch, and Grub2 is too stubborn to let me boot back into Windows XP to access my software array.

    The difference is, My array is set up as a span of 7 volumes.

    I tried building with the mdadm command:
    Code:
    mdadm --build /dev/md0 --rounding=64 --level=linear --raid-devices=7 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1 /dev/sde1 /dev/sdf1 /dev/sdg1
    Based on the options here: http://man-wiki.net/index.php/8:mdad...eate_or_build:

    It seemed to work; I got the array built and started:
    Code:
    mdadm: array /dev/md0 built and started.
    ...but it won't mount.
    Code:
    mount -t ntfs /dev/md0 /media/winraid
    Failed to read last sector (26366742248): Invalid argument
    HINTS: Either the volume is a RAID/LDM but it wasn't setup yet,
       or it was not setup correctly (e.g. by not using mdadm --build ...),
       or a wrong device is tried to be mounted,
       or the partition table is corrupt (partition is smaller than NTFS),
       or the NTFS boot sector is corrupt (NTFS size is not valid).
    Failed to mount '/dev/md0': Invalid argument
    The device '/dev/md0' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
    Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
    partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?
    Has anyone successfully built and mounted a Windows-created software-spanned array?

    Any suggestions?

    Thanks,

    -Wes

  7. #27
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    Jul 2012
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    Re: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    Sorry for the bump, but I'm still looking for a solution to this.

    Has anyone successfully mounted a Window "span" array using mdadm (or heck, using any other tool?)

    -Wes

  8. #28
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    Oct 2009
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    Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Re: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    I doubt it. Dynamic disks are a Windows only thing.
    Come to #ubuntuforums! We have cookies! | Basic Ubuntu Security Guide

    Tomorrow's an illusion and yesterday's a dream, today is a solution...

  9. #29
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    Jul 2012
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    Re: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    Quote Originally Posted by CharlesA View Post
    I doubt it. Dynamic disks are a Windows only thing.
    Thanks for the reply, Charles.

    Linux actually can mount Windows dynamic disks; see post 5 in this very thread.

    Many folks have reported mounting both striped and mirrored Windows Dynamic arrays.

    The key is using mdadm --build instead of mdadm --assemble, because Windows softraid doesn't use superblocks like Linux RAID, so that tells mdadm to ignore superblocks when building.

    --create does Bad Things to an array that already has data on it, or so I've read...

    I thought maybe I was using the wrong chunk size, but I'm not sure what to do. It looks like it should be 64k.

  10. #30
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    Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Re: can I mount my WinXP software RAID 0 array in Ubuntu/Kubuntu?

    I don't like using dynamic disks in Windows due to the them being inaccessible from another OS, so I don't really have much information about that.

    Also: Post 5 is from 4 years ago and something may have changed in the way they do dynamic disks since then.
    Come to #ubuntuforums! We have cookies! | Basic Ubuntu Security Guide

    Tomorrow's an illusion and yesterday's a dream, today is a solution...

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