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Want to clone my Raid 1 setup to non-raid

D

Dari

Lifer
I have a mirror setup with the bare minimum. I want to go from a Raid 1 to a single HDD setup but I want my operating environment exactly as before. Is this possible (with Windows Backup)?
 
Probably not with Windows backup.

I recently did a very similar image to get rid of a Raid 0. I used Macrium Reflect.

They have the free edition here:
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Just make the image and then switch the drives to a single hard drive and boot from the Macrium Reflect recovery software. You will have to burn the recovery software from the menu in the main program.
 
RAID 1 is just a duplication, so just yanking out a disk should work. The disk will however still be marked as a RAID disk.

If you want to reset to non-raid then you need to clone your RAID array. Disassemble the array and then put the clone back onto the single disk.
 
Windows 7 or newer? Yes it's possible, and works quite well. Write an image using the built in software. Then use the recovery disk to boot and restore the image. You will have the option to install the non RAID AHCI drivers during recovery, if you are turning off RAID in the bios. Have them on a USB stick.

I've done this with both RAID 0 and 1.
 
I can't believe I got such good answers so fast. Thanks guys, there is hope. I was afraid that it'd be a nightmare.

Yes, it is Windows 7.
 
Also, if I'm going from a 750GB HDD to 1TB HDD, will the new drive see the extra space or do I have to manually do something?
 
Dari said:
I can't believe I got such good answers so fast. Thanks guys, there is hope. I was afraid that it'd be a nightmare.

Yes, it is Windows 7.
Click to expand...

As someone noted, it could depend on the cloning software, but not too likely. I didn't even think of some potential dilemma when I built a system in 2007, and cloned a single boot drive on the motherboard controller to a RAID5 array on a 9650SE PCI_E card. In those days, I may have used something like Partition Magic, and the viable choice nowadays is Acronis and options mentioned here by others.
 
Dari said:
Also, if I'm going from a 750GB HDD to 1TB HDD, will the new drive see the extra space or do I have to manually do something?
Click to expand...
It depends on the software, but it's possible it will repartition the drive exactly as it was before and leave the extra space as "Unallocated". You can then just allocate that free space when you get back into windows.
 
If you are using some sort on motherboard provided RAID solution then you should be OK to go into the RAID controller BIOS, tell it to break the RAID mirror and have two disks that are identical. I've done this morning than one.

What I did was first removed one of the RAID disk by physically disconnecting it. Then I went into the RAID BIOS and broke the RAID, leaving the connected disk as a non-RAID solo disk. Booted, verified everything was OK.

If it wasn't OK, I'd wipe that still-connected disk, restore the RAID disk and allow the mirror to be rebuilt. The RAID option is just a flag on the disk to identify it as a RAID disk. Nothing really special.
 
BarkingGhostar said:
If you are using some sort on motherboard provided RAID solution then you should be OK to go into the RAID controller BIOS, tell it to break the RAID mirror and have two disks that are identical. I've done this morning than one.

What I did was first removed one of the RAID disk by physically disconnecting it. Then I went into the RAID BIOS and broke the RAID, leaving the connected disk as a non-RAID solo disk. Booted, verified everything was OK.

If it wasn't OK, I'd wipe that still-connected disk, restore the RAID disk and allow the mirror to be rebuilt. The RAID option is just a flag on the disk to identify it as a RAID disk. Nothing really special.
Click to expand...

What about the warning that if you change the raid settings that you will lose all data?
 
I have done it many times using Acronis TrueImage. TI sees a RAID array as a lettered drive. It can clone that drive to any other single drive. Using a TI bootable rescue medium, it is a simple cloning operation. That is how I back up and/or replicate my RAID1 data drive.
 
Dari said:
What about the warning that if you change the raid settings that you will lose all data?
Click to expand...
I am aware of this and I think it is more designed to cover liability than anything else. I unplugged a disk in a RIAD1 mirror into another computer and it booted just fine.

Confident that I hadn't lost anything, I destroyed the RAID that still had the second disk connected and nothing was lost. I then unplugged it and plugged back in the first disk and repeated the RAID destruction on it and again was left with two identical disks.

YMMV, of course.
 
Last edited:
BarkingGhostar said:
I am aware of this and I think it is more designed to cover liability than anything else. I unplugged a disk in a RIAD1 mirror into another computer and it booted just fine.

Confident that I hadn't lost anything, I destroyed the RAID that still had the second disk connected and nothing was lost. I then unplugged it and plugged back in the first disk and repeated the RAID destruction on it and again was left with two identical disks.

YMMV, of course.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
 
Well, I've done everything in this thread and turning a raid 1 drive into non-raid was a lot easier than I thought. As Ghostar said, I just deleted the raid profile and reset the drive to non-raid and it worked. I then cloned my HDD using Reflect and that worked as well. However, I cannot boot from the cloned drive. It says 'BootMgr is Missing'. I cloned both partitions on the hard drive so I have no idea what the issue is.
 
I know this post is very old, but maybe someone can still benefit from this. I've successfully cloned Windows 7,8,10 many times from raid to non-raid, and non-raid to raid with hiren's boot cd using ghost.
Normally this won't work from one disk controller (and driver) type to a different one within Windows. However the key seems to be that before I clone, I have to be sure that BOTH disk controller types are presented and fully installed (updated drivers and all) in device manager. Then I'll clone it. Afterwards, Windows will boot and will already have the different disk type/controller/driver ready to go and should boot successfully.
 
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