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Single disk -> RAID 1 with PCI RAID controller

M

MulLa

Golden Member
Hi all,

I've got a new client who's currently using an oldish P3 1Ghz as their server with a single 160GB PATA hard disk.

I've suggested to them that despite regular backup they should have a RAID 1 array for their server for better data protection.....

to cut a long story short.

I'm thinking about putting in a PCI SATA RAID controller and a pair of 200GB SATA HDDs to form the RAID 1 array.

Is it possiable to do this without rebuilding the entire server (which I didn't built in the first place).

I was thinking:
1. Install SATA RAID driver into current PATA HDD.
2. Put in SATA RAID controller and boot up with PATA HDD to detect controller
3. Use Acronis Drive Image Server to clone PATA Drive to SATA RAID 1 array
4. Reboot server with SATA RAID 1

Has anyone attempted anything similar? Any tips / suggestions??


Thanks in advance.
 
I'm not familiar with the Acronis Drive Image software, but you may have problems since it may require the raid controller drivers to access the RAID 1 array. When I use Norton/Symantec Ghost from DOS it is unable to access my array for this reason.

If Acronis works in DOS, you may be able to setup a DOS boot disk with the raid controller drivers setup to access the array.
 
Off the top of my head, drive imaging for a 2k/2k3 server will probably not work. boot.ini will still be pointing to the PATA drive, to say nothing of all those registry entries that will point to C:. Unless you can find a third party application that can transfer everything, I would avoid it. Rebuilding the server would be the easy route.
 
Thanks all for the replies even tho it's only bad news. It's going to be a major pain trying to re-document everything prior to the rebuild. Ohwell, what needs to be done must be done!
 
Originally posted by: Ryoga
Off the top of my head, drive imaging for a 2k/2k3 server will probably not work. boot.ini will still be pointing to the PATA drive, to say nothing of all those registry entries that will point to C:. Unless you can find a third party application that can transfer everything, I would avoid it. Rebuilding the server would be the easy route.
Click to expand...

Okay, so you'd need to modify the boot.ini -- but wouldn't the RAID array then become the "C" drive (assuming you removed the original HD)? Why would this not work? It should, to the system, be no different than ghosting your install onto another hard drive and swapping them out.
 
I agree with Matthias... if you can successfully ghost the drive image to the new drive array, it should work fine in Windows. Just pull the old drive for the initial swap, then you can re-install the old drive after Windows recognizes it (the new array) as the C: drive. I think the time investment in attempting this is worth the risk, since it sounds like you will be able to save a lot of time if you are successful.
 
Very good point Matthias99. I suppose it doesn't hurt in making an attempt first since I can always fall back to the old drive if the array failes to boot for any reasons.

xylem, I'm not planning to reuse the old drive since they're alright storage space wise. I'll just leave it there with them as a spare.

Thanks all. Will go and source some equipment for them now!
 
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