Need hard drive cloning/ RAID advice?

[wamblam]

A quick run down of my current system

ASUS P5KC MB (on board J micron JMB363 raid controller)
WD 150Mb SATA Raptor hard drive
Windows XP

This system works well except.......

(a) I am running out of HD space

(b) I have no back up!

Having searched these forums and others I have purchased 2 x WD Caviar Blacks (I TB)

My goal is to run them in a raid 1 config so I have a mirror if one drive dies.

What is the best way to clone and set up the drives?

In the ASUS MB manual it only gives you advice on setting up two fresh clean drive with nothing on them. It say nothing about going from a single disk to 2 disks?
Is there a problem doing that?

I have downloaded the "Acronis True Image" disk cloning software from the Western Digital website.

Can I just clone one of the WDC blacks from the Raptor and then set the other drive up in raid 1 afterwards?

What is the best way of attacking this.


Currently both WDC blacks are still in their packets and unformatted.

Any suggestions?

 

[lopri]

The best way is to back up the data you need from the Raptor, and transfer it over to the freshly built RAID array.

 

[wamblam]

The best way is to back up the data you need from the Raptor, and transfer it over to the freshly built RAID array.

Hi, I really don't want to do that, its complicated

Does anyone know if its possible to go from a one disk system to a mirrored RAID 1 ssytem without starting the whole thing from fresh.

Surely it must be possible?

 

[Redshirt 24]

Someone's going to come along and correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it you have to have both drives in place when you set up a RAID array and they both get formatted in the process. Unless you keep the Raptor as a boot drive, you're stuck...

 

[SolMiester]

Hi, easeus is another imaging program, but I think in either case, your o/s will not have the SATA Raid drivers, so you will need to intall the drivers before you clone to the raid, otherwise the o/s will not be able to mount the the array......

So, turn off pc, add drives, create raid 1 array, boot up, and install the driver. XP will then have the driver in registry, when you clone to the new array, windows should find correct driver...

Before booting under new array, remove old drive...

GL

 

[wamblam]

Thanks for all the replies.

I did a little research this afternoon and by all accounts you cannot "easilly" turn a single drive into a raid 1 array.......

Obviously there is a hole in the market for someone willing to write the software to do that!

What I did was format one of the 1TB WDC blacks and cloned the 150GB raptor (then removed the raptor)

Works perfectly as far as I an tell (I am using it typing this!)

I find it to be actually a bit faster than the raptor in the real world.

My plan is now to use the 2nd WDC black as a back up drive.

Now I could use the same software to clone/back up the drive, say once a month.

(it took about 45mins to clone the raptor)

The problem is I would have to delete/re-format the backup drive every time I wanted to do a back up.

Is there an easier way to get a complete clone of the disk via back up?

The slight risk is that after I delete the drive prior to back up. my main drive fails either before or during the back up process leaving me with nothing.

That kind of why I liked the idea of raid 1 (although a nasty virus/malfunction could also possibly wipe both drives)

I guess maybe my only option is a third drive and rotate them?

Any suggestions?

 

[RebateMonger]

I did a little research this afternoon and by all accounts you cannot "easilly" turn a single drive into a raid 1 array.......

Some RAID controllers can do it, some can't. For instance, $70 HighPoint IDE RAID controllers could. Their $160-ish 23xx SATA series can't.

 

[Emulex]

all intel matrix raid can do this - more systems than you can shake a stick at.

i just shove old drive in usb box, build new raid, and clone back,extend partition.

maybe not so hot for alignment but this is a home system

 

[HappyCracker]

Why not keep your important data on the 1TB RAID1 array and let the OS and programs reside on the Raptor?