moving existing install to new raid 0 array

bru

bru

bru

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I had intended to install my two new WD640 blues into my system, get it all up and running and then use arcronis to clone the entire install over to the new array.
several people have mentioned that this is not as easy as it should be but PistolPete has said he can sugest a differnt method of doing it.
PistolPete said:
I would do it a slightly different way.
Setup the 2 disks in RAID whist booting from the existing disk. It's relatively simply to do. I went from a single disk to a pair of RAID1 disks but the principles are the same. Rather than continuing to hijack this thread if you start another I'll post the way I did it.
Click to expand...


looking forward to hearing your response.


ps also looking forward to DHL actually delivering the damm goods (i wonder what thier excuse will be today).
 
Yesterday I used Acronis TrueImage to clone a 750GB to a 1TB drive and the copy process starts after a reboot just before Windows loads so I think that by that time the RAID disks should be working so I don't see why it shouldn't work.

You can have a RAID array and another single drive in your system at the same time.
 
well i cant see why it shouldnt work either but Mike1983 has had no end of problems getting it to work, whereas Pistolpete has said he has a different way of doing things. Well my parts have finally arrived (so much for next day delivery not ocuk's fault) so ill give it a go and let you know how i get on.
 
ok installed the drives no problem (the other things caused no end of problems :eek: but there will be a thread in general hardware about that).

once the drives were in and everything booted up fine I was good to go, rebooted and entered the bios set the SATA thing to raid and then reboot. this time round entered the raid setup and configured the volumes as i wanted them.

original drive 500Gb

80Gb drive C
387Gb drive D

new raid array two 640Gb

160Gb drive 1
1032Gb drive 2

ok upon reboot thats when things started to go wrong BSOD :(
umm something wasnt right obviously, this seemd to be similar problems that pete1983 was having. So back into the bios and I set the sata to AHCI and reboot, windows boots normally from the drive C as I would expect it to.

entering disk management I see that it has recognized the two new volumes as new drives despite the SATA thing being set as AHCI (I didnt expect this), ok so I set the partitions and format the two new volumes. I fire up arcronis disk director 10 and let it scan and detect all the drives, select copy a partition and select the destination ERROR the destination drive does not contain enough free space. Now your proberbly all sitting there saying well its obvious you twit, but to me it took a good while and few reboots to realise that you cant copy a partition to a ready partitioned and formated volume, so after sorting out the two new volumes so they were unpartitioned and not formated the copy partition section of arcronis says all is good to go :D.

Selecting the commit button and the machine says it need to reboot, during the boot phase it does the copying I leave it over night to complete. In the morning a quick move of the mouse and all seems well the drives seem to have all the correct data on them so I can conclude that it has worked.

ok reboot and into the bios dissable the original 500Gb drive and select drive 1 as the boot drive, save and exit the bios and BSOD :(, ok so ive done something wrong. Back in to the bios and see that the choice is drive 1 or drive 2 but both are showing as 640Gb drives, so obviously the bios isnt showing the raid volumes, if I set the SATA thing to raid then the bios sees the two new drives as partition 1 160Gb and partition 2 1032Gb sorted I think :). Of course the smiles soo turn to frowns as it fails to boot again it just sits there looking for the floppydrive, dissable that and then it BSOD. :(
So at the moment im a bit stumped the whole copying the partions bit was fairly easy cept for my noobishness :p but why it wont boot im at a bit of a loss, so any sugestons would be greatly appriciated.
 
Hello

Well done for sticking at it and getting so far!!

There's a lot of description up there and I may have mis-interpreted something but if you ask me the BSOD's you get when trying to boot with IDE set to RAID mode is because your O/S installation still does not have the necessary RAID drivers. This is the problem I had.

From what I understand though, am I correct in assuming you can get into Vista and see the new "RAID" array using IDE-AHCI mode? If so then how's about having a go at booting into Vista then installing Matrix Storage manager. My thoughts are that this MAY install RAID drivers but I could be wrong and it could just install the program itself which won't help you out. Then again you may even get the message "your computer does not meet the minimum spec...." Worth a go anyway.

The above is just another suggestion to help you stick at your chosen path of migrating a non-RAID to a RAID setup. My suggested advice though would be to do a fresh install but I know that's not your current preference.

Good luck :)
 
Or another thought is set your IDE mode to RAID then try a Vista repair, I forget the shortcut for it though. It's one of the options in the startup menu when you can select safe mode etc. I think you need the Vista disc in too but cant remember??

There's an option during the repair to include additional drivers which is where you can use the ones from the Intel site on a seperate CD / USB etc... Again, just another suggestion that may / may not work.
 
grrrrr ok ive tried..when I started this I said to myself I will give it a day and if I cant get it to work I will reinstall, well ill be reinstalling tommorow as this thing has done my head in completely. Everything seems to be correct but it just wont boot, so ill give it a miss for tonight and maybe just have one more look in the morning before I reinstall.
 
Well at least you tried and learn't a a fair bit from it like I did :)

To be honest I'd just cut your losses and go straight into a fresh install, make use of your morning instead of getting more wound up lol.

Let us know how things go either way.
 
Well with the fun or reinstalling everything :rolleyes: I now have a nice raid 0 array with two volumes a small one 160GB for the windows install and then a 1TB one for all my data, my exsisting 500GB drive will be going into the wifes machine but her 200GB drive will be coming into mine to back up anything important.

bootvolume.jpg


datavolume3.jpg
 
Why is the burst rate lower than the average transfer rate, is it just testing the burst rate of one drive?

Nice speed btw :o :D
 
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