Mirror breaking and disk copying solution

[Schoolies]

I have a Windows 2000 Server with a software mirror of two SCSI hard drives.

I need to extend the partition of the C Drive, but the computer is old and I want to be completely sure I can recover quickly from anything I do.

Here's my solution:

Purchase two new hard drives. Break the mirror. Using Ghost 10.0, clone the C partition to one new drive and clone the D partition to another new drive. I will create the mirrror on another drive later on.

 

[bsobel]

Should work fine.

 

[Schoolies]

I've been reading about Norton Ghost and RAID and it says that Ghost does not support any type of RAID.....It does not support cloning drives that have had RAID removed, such as after you break a mirrored set.

Are they just wiping their hands clean of any problems? Has anyone cloned a previous cloned partition/disk?



http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/1999010613522725******=w

Ghost and RAID
Ghost is not compatible with computers that use RAID. That is, Symantec Ghost 8.x and earlier, and Norton 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.

 

[bsobel]

It should work fine, we don't include raid drives in our testing matrix as it's primary a desktop product.

 

[tyanni]

I use Acronis True Image on my server for this very reason - it supports RAID.

 

[redbeard1]

Norton Corporate usually will clone a hardware raid to a single drive and then back to a new raid. It usually will clone a drive that was detached from a software mirror, though if it works, it converts the drive back to a basic disk. Norton 2003 usually works ok. Norton 10 is the renamed Drive Image product, and I have not used it myself. I know some people like the original versions of Ghost better.

I have had poor luck cloning partitions only. Boot partitions don't seem to like to boot after just a partition clone.

My suggestion would be to buy two new scsi drives the same size, with the size of a single drive being large enough to hold both old partitions. Buy a scsi raid card that will allow you to create an array with an existing drive. I think LSI and Adaptec make cards that will do this. Clone the small old drive to the bigger new drive, which this process usually allows you to set the size of the partitions on the new destination drive. Then build a new array on the scsi card.

This gains you better performance from the server because of having the hardware raid, and gets you a real mirror to recover from a crash. MS software mirrors of boot drives have a nasty habit of not rebuilding properly after a drive failure, in my experience.