Can you go from IDE to RAID without reinstalling everything?

[Moonbeam]

I got asked if I know how to install drives on an unused RAID controller and clone the system that's on the IDE C drive over to it. I took a look at VCOM's Copy Commander, and it says you can clone any IDE drive and other types, except USB and Firewire drives, too, like SCSI by having a windows boot disk with cd booting on it. Is RAID a form of SCSI and can you clone to it? Does anybody know how to accomplish this task and what you can use to do it?

 

[Jeff7181]

RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives

The drives can be either IDE (which includes Serial ATA) or SCSI, but not both in the same array (to my knowledge).

I would think the easiest way to do it would be to backup the hard drive, create the RAID array, then restore the backup onto the new array.

 

[Moonbeam]

I would think the easiest way to do it would be to backup the hard drive, create the RAID array, then restore the backup onto the new array.
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OK, but I don't know what these words mean. What would you actually do to accomplish this? I can figure out creating the RAID array. What I don't get is what you mean by restoring the backup onto the new array. What do you do?

 

[xSauronx]

mebbe try using Norton Ghost? ghost your system to another drive or a cd backup or whatever

switch drives, set up the raid drives, reboot with ghost and ghost the image onto the drives

ghost is cheap, you can get the whole system works for 10 or 15 bucks online at a few places. worth it for ghost and antivirus alone, nevermind the other stuff you get

dunno if it works on raid, never tried it.

 

[LunarRay]

Why couldn't you just insert your hard drive from the regular IDE into the Raid ide controller plus the other drive (empty) for -1 and after defining in the bootup sequence, the type of Raid you want just let it start going from there. It will run one drive if one has bombed and will copy itself to the new drive when installed. I think you can do this.

 

[Moonbeam]

I think ghost is for restoration of a systen on the same computer and set up.

 

[sunase]

You can restore Ghost images to different drives. I just upgraded my laptop drive a while back and did exactly that.

Anyway with a seperate raid controller the array will just appear as one disk to the programs you run (showed up like IDE in my BIOS and DOS, although the windows driver came across as SCSI with the last card I used). So Copy Commander shouldn't have any problem cloning over to it.

>drives can be either IDE (which includes Serial ATA) or SCSI, but not both in the same array

Well if you're just using Windows software raid then you can combine these. I know, I know - we're not talking about that here. ^^

 

[BG4533]

I have used Ghost to move go from RAID 0 to a single drive. I did this with SATA Raptors. I see no reason Ghost could not go from single drive to RAID. Also, I prefer to Ghost to a secondary hard drive that is not being used as it is quicker, but you can also save your images to CDRs directly from Ghost.

 

[Sheriff]

1st set-up your RAID Array while using the IDE Drive so it will install the Drivers in your current OS and then Ghost over. I've done it many times.