Raid-1 with existing drive

[crab]

I have a C2D rig in my A/V rack that I use for a DVR system, and Keyscan door access system. I'm about to swap out the current 320g SATA (has xp partition), and 120g IDE drives for two 500g SATA in a simple RAID 1.

Any chance I can clone that 320g to the array simply to avoid re-installing XP, and configuring the DVR and access systems? How should I go about that?

If its not easy, I'll just find somewhere inside the 4u case to house the 320g and keep it intact....duh I didnt even think of that until i was typing this lol. I'll probably do that if there is room. I'll post anyway for knowledge sake

Thanks guys.

 

[Fayd]

umm... i'd assume you can easily do that.. add the two drives and make an array, clone the 320 gig drive to the new array using a drive cloning tool (acronis true-image comes to mind), take out the 320 gig drive, then expand the created ntfs partition on the new array.

 

[crab]

umm... i'd assume you can easily do that.. add the two drives and make an array, clone the 320 gig drive to the new array using a drive cloning tool (acronis true-image comes to mind), take out the 320 gig drive, then expand the created ntfs partition on the new array.

Cool. I did already image with Acronis, I was just curious mainly about issues with boot sector stuff, and xp booting okay from the raid array without being a fresh install.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think that you would have to install the RAID drivers into the XP install before doing the clone.

 

[Fayd]

I think that you would have to install the RAID drivers into the XP install before doing the clone.

yeah, true. when i used acronis, i had to do this because i was moving to an onboard controller to a PCI card controller. so i'd assume you'd have to do the same to move to RAID. (even if you have the AHCI driver installed...maybe?)

 

[Fayd]

Cool. I did already image with Acronis, I was just curious mainly about issues with boot sector stuff, and xp booting okay from the raid array without being a fresh install.

i didnt actually use acronis, i used a stripped down version modified for seagate called seatools.

it copied the boot sector properly and auto-expanded the partition onto the new drive.