Image software for hardware RAID

[Nucleus111]

Does anyone know of a software package that can create an image of hardware RAID desktops?

Thanks.

 

[Nothinman]

Any of the normal ones, as long as you have drivers for your controller.

 

[Nucleus111]

Well, I know Ghost 7.5 doesn't work. Says it right in the manual.

 

[Nothinman]

If you have DOS drivers for the card it should work fine, they probably just don't include any drivers on their boot disk maker program.

 

[Nucleus111]

Nope, thats not it. It will create the image with no errors. When you go to restore, it will come up with errors. Checking the Ghost manual, it states that it does not work with dynamic disks or RAID.

 

[Nothinman]

Dynamic disks I can understand because that's Windows software RAID and I wouldn't trust that anyway. But I can't for the life of me understand why it wouldn't work with IDE RAID, but I guess I'd just chalk it up to another side effect of sh!tty IDE almost-RAID controllers =)

 

[Nucleus111]

Found this on Symantec's site:
I'll have to give it a try...you may have been right with the DOS drivers, just didn't think about the ASPI portion since the array was always found correctly.



Ghost compatibility with RAID

Situation:
This document describes the compatibility between Ghost and computers that use RAID.

Solution:



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Before you begin:
Symantec does not provide technical support for imaging RAID drives, regardless of whether the drive uses software level RAID or hardware level RAID. Successfully imaging a RAID drive is dependent on the specific computer model, driver controller, hard drive, and RAID implementation. Symantec provides the following information only as an aid to cloning RAID drives. This information is a suggestion only. It is likely to work only in limited circumstances. Symantec does not provide support for the following information.

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Ghost and RAID
Ghost is not compatible with computers that use RAID. That is, Symantec Ghost 7.5 and earlier, and Ghost 2003 and earlier, do not support RAID controllers on computers that are being imaged. In addition:
Ghost does not work with software level RAID.
Although Ghost might work in some limited circumstances with hardware level RAID, Symantec does not support using Ghost for cloning hardware level RAID drives.
Ghost does support cloning drives that have had RAID removed, such as after you break a mirrored set.


Ghost and hardware-level RAID systems
Although it is not a supported feature, Ghost can sometimes create and restore images to hardware level RAID systems if you load the appropriate DOS ASPI driver to support this. Load the DOS ASPI driver when you create the image file and again when you restore the image file. DOS ASPI drivers can usually be obtained from the RAID hardware manufacturer. For other ASPI driver information, see the document Information on ASPI drivers.


Notes on getting Ghost to work with hardware RAID systems
Use similar hardware: Restore the image file only to a computer that uses the same hardware as the source computer. Because the operating system needs the drivers for the array, the drives will be inaccessible on the destination computer unless the hardware is the same.

SCSI or IDE: Ghost's ability to work with RAID arrays is not dependent on whether the array uses SCSI drives or IDE drives.

Mirrored sets in Windows NT: To clone mirrored sets in Windows NT, break the mirror, run Ghost with the -NTIID switch ( -ntiid ), and then recreate the mirror using the Windows NT Disk Administrator. Note that duplexed disks are a type of mirrored set. See the document Cannot migrate Windows NT mirrored or striped sets to larger drives.

Mirrored sets in Windows 2000/XP: Symantec Ghost 7.5 and Norton Ghost 2003 support cloning a mirrored partition in Window 2000 and Windows XP provided that the source partition is on a Dynamic Disk and the image is restored to a Basic Disk. The restored partition is not mirrored. See the document Ghost compatibility with Dynamic partitions.

Restore the partition rather than the disk: In some situations, Ghost may be able to restore a partition from a disk image when Ghost cannot restore the disk image.