Moving windows partition to another drive

[Ika]

So I have my Windows installed on a 250gb Seagate ST3250410AS. I just obtained a second ST3250410AS; I was planning on putting the two Seagates into RAID 0 and running my boot off that (with frequent backups, of course).

How would I move my Windows partition (which is most of the 250gb HDD) to the new RAID setup? Would I be able to use a program such as Norton Ghost to duplicate my partition on an empty hard drive, format the current Seagate, then RAID 0 the two together and put the Windows partition back? I'm very unfamiliar with how programs such as Ghost or TrueImage work.

And before someone comments, yes, I know the risks of running a RAID 0 partition as my boot partition; yes, I know that RAID 0 does not benefit my system that much.

 

[mpilchfamily]

To set up a raid you'll need to perform a fresh install. So backup the information on the drive and proceed to reinstall windows and establish your Raid configuration. Then you can move your important files back over.

 

[Ika]

Okay, so I guess that part's clear. I went out and got Acronis True Image 11 and made a full backup to an external USB drive of mine. However, I did a test restoring run (I took out my existing boot HDD, placed the wiped, new one in, and tried to restore my backup onto that). Unfortunately, Acronis TI doesn't recognize my external USB... why?

 

[Ika]

Anyone? Should I make a new thread regarding why True Image doesn't see my external in Software?

 

[RebateMonger]

You might also try Acronis' support, since you just bought the program. In the past, recognition of USB drives was always a sore point with imaging backup programs like Ghost. Although I'm sure it's gotten a lot better, a quick Internet search reveals that USB recognition can still be a problem. The answer might be as simple as the USB settings in the BIOS.

 

[Ika]

Ah, interesting. I was fooling around in the boot CD menus and I discovered that Acronis didn't see my external drive in the Restore section, but it saw it in the other sections. I went back to the Restore section and voila! It's appeared. I'm currently attempting to restore my C partition image onto the newly created RAID array.

 

[Ika]

Looks like I ran into another problem. I successfully copied over the image from my old HDD to the new RAID setup, but I think I hit a snag.

When I first installed Vista on my old HDD, I believe I had my BIOS set to run the HDD as IDE, not AHCI. I found this out a few months ago when I tried to change my HDDs to AHCI mode, but I couldn't, because after installation, you apparently can't change it.

The problem here is, I think RAID setups need the HDDs to be in AHCI mode; since my operating system needs the HDDs to be in IDE mode, I can't access my system.

I found an article that tutorials how to change an IDE-installed Vista setup to an AHCI setup, but I can't do that unless I'm able to access Vista directly - which I can't, because I can't boot into it.

Is there any way for me to fix this problem without restoring my image onto one HDD again, fixing the problem, then re-making the backup and re-restoring the backup to the RAID setup?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Aflac
Is there any way for me to fix this problem without restoring my image onto one HDD again, fixing the problem, then re-making the backup and re-restoring the backup to the RAID setup?

Magic 8-ball says... "not bloody likely".