Migrating from a standalone drive to a RAID configuration

[Fluence]

Hello, all

I'm looking to move from a 2-drive IDE setup (one OS drive, one storage drive) to a 4-drive RAID 10 configuration, and would appreciate some advice.

I would rather not start from scratch with installing Windows, and will be removing my current drive after copying Windows and all my data to the new drives.

Moving from 1 drive to a larger drive, I would just Ghost copy the existing drive to the new drive, install the new drive, and be done with it (you know the drill), but I haven't been able to find any information on how to move from 1 drive to a RAID 10 setup.

I'll be running this on an Abit Aw8 Max board, which has 4 Intel Matrix SATA RAID controllers and 2 Sil3132 controller.


So, some specific questions, and please add anything useful...

1) Will it work to install the four drives on my primary SATA ports, my current OS and storage drives on the fifth SATA ports, format the raid, and then copy the OS onto the RAID setup? Can I Ghost the drives like this? Symantec's site has rather poor information.

2) How will I go about doing this, if the above won't work?

One major thing, I have a partition structure I'd like to preserve. (C: D: E: F: G: ...)

 

[Fluence]

Well, I'm about to start this operation, and am just cleaning up my drives...

So, anyone?

Can I PartitionMagic copy the standalone drive to the RAID array?

Info on the web is really hard to find.
The searches I've done have resulted in adding a drive to an array or installing windows on a new array, not copying an existing copy of windows onto a new array.

So, please, help if you can!

Thanks in advance.

 

[redbeard1]

While not officailly supported by Symantec, Ghost Corporate and Ghost 2003, generally will clone from a single drive to an array. The later version of consumer Ghost is the renamed PQ Drive Image, and I've not used it.

Acronis also will handle raid array imaging

 

[boomerang]

Originally posted by: redbeard1
Acronis also will handle raid array imaging

Do this.

 

[amddude]

Acronis is great, definitely use that.

 

[Fluence]

I used Ghost 9 to clone my drive to RAID, but the RAID array won't boot without the standalone present.

I suppose I'll try Acronis, thanks for the suggestions.

As to the delay in posting, I gave up on working on it during the week...

 

[Fluence]

I'm having the same problem with Acronis True Image Enterprise. I wasn't able to 'clone' the drive, because my current partitions are all Dynamic Volumes.
Instead, I performed a backup of C:\ to an image, then recovered the image to the RAID array, partition I:

The problem is that it boots to an odd windows logo screen, and then hangs. My thought is that I need to use Sysprep or something, but I really don't know.
I'm thinking strongly of just installing Windows to the array directly, but all those updates, all that software installation and configuration...


I'd really rather not...

If anyone can explain this phenomenon, thanks. I've only been able to spend a few hours on this, but my searches aren't finding anything relevant anymore.

Thanks in advance...

 

[dclive]

Did you put the disk controller of the new RAID adapter into your previous version of Windows prior to Ghosting it and moving it to new hardware? If not, Windows won't know a thing about the disk controller, and you'll get STOP 7B errors and the like.

Really, really think if you want to do this. RAID that is housed in the motherboard is motherboard-dependent - chances are if that motherboard dies, all of your RAID-based data is permanently gone unless you can find another motherboard JUST like it with the SAME RAID controller. If you can't .. poof, data's gone and useless.

Make file-based (not disk-based) backups. NTBackup works fine for this.

 

[Fluence]

Yes. I'm using an Abit Aw8 MAX board and had the standalone drive on the Sil3132 controller and the RAID array on the Intel Matrix controller.

Currently I'm 'reinstalling' Windows, which so far has taken about 15 hours, though 7 hours of that was because I went to sleep and woke up to find some user prompts for some Bluetooth drivers that XP setup couldn't find. It's so far taken 1 and a half hours to 'Register Components'...

I -think- the big problem is that I had the RAID array with set drive letters I-M:\ when I created the backup image, because when it asked me to Browse for the missing files, the drives were I: and J:, so when rebooting to the Array, it's looking for files on C and D: that don't exist. If this Windows reinstallation fails or doesn't work properly, I'm going to try removing drive letters before creating the backup image, to see if that does the trick.

I think I'll be allright, dclive, as the Intel Matrix RAID controller is (at least currently) extremely common, though I really dislike the fact that it's a 0+1 and not 1+0, especially as they advertise it as RAID 10.

Well, thanks for the response.