Non Raid Image to Raid 0 config question

Ok, this is the first time i've tried this and I've done a quick search but wasn't able to find anything related.

I'm using TI v9.0 and have done a complete backup on my 250GB HD which is in a non-raid configuration. I just purchased 2 320GB Drives and would like to set them up as a Raid 0 config. So, my question is, is it possible to use my non-raid image of the 250GB drive and restore it to the drives configured Raid 0?

I've already tried to install the 2 drives, configure to Raid 0, load TI by boot CD, load image and resize the partition. After i did this everything seems fine at first but about 5 seconds after the Windows logo appears i get a quick blue screen and the computer restarts.

Would anyone have any suggestions or is this even possible?

Thanks for for the help!
DJ

 

You'll probably have to install the RAID drivers onto your existing drive and then create a new image. You may have to set the BIOS to RAID also even though you are not using it so Windows will use the RAID drivers. I'm not sure if it would detect them or not, but it's what I would try.

Download and install the RAID drivers for the current system. Reboot into the BIOS and set it to RAID mode. Boot back into Windows. If it starts okay, do another full drive image backup. Shutdown and setup your RAID array and then restore the new image. Since the drivers are now installed, hopefully Windows will recognize the array and continue to boot.

If you can't see the drive or it won't boot in RAID mode without an array setup, try just installing the drivers and making a new image. I know you can have single drives and RAID mixed in RAID mode, but I haven't tried it in RAID mode without any RAID array. It may differ from chipset to chipset too.

Another option may be to do a Windows Repair (I'm not sure if it gives you the choice to add RAID drivers or not, though).

Keep your current drive image in case you need to get back to it.

 

Thank you much Mudcrab for the suggestion. I have one quick question though. How do I load a different Raid Driver to my drive exactly? The only time i've loaded Raid drivers in the past is during WinXp installation. I've never loaded a Raid Driver after windows was already installed.

Thanks again!
DJ

 

If you purchased the motherboard it usually comes with the RAID drivers on a cd (or floppy). Otherwise you can download them from the manufacturer's website.

If you have a brand name computer (HP, Dell, Compaq, Sony, etc.) then the drivers should be available on their support sites. If the computer is older, Windows may have them built in.

If you end up going the Windows Repair route, I think the process is to put the RAID drivers on a floppy, create the RAID array, restore the image to the array, boot from the XP cd and start the install process -- Press F6 to install the RAID drivers from the floppy, then pick the Repair option to repair the existing Windows installation. This should install the drivers and allow XP to boot. You will probably have to do some Windows updates, though.

Just a thought... With the blue screen problem, have you tried to boot into Windows Safe Mode? If you can, you should be able to install the drivers from there, or Windows may detect the RAID array and install them automatically.

I intend to test out this procedure myself because I want to know how/if it works. Right now I'm waiting for my hard drives.

 

I'll try this today and will let you know how it goes. Thanks again for the help!

 

Update:
1) I loaded my latest Image onto the Raid 0 drives via the acronis boot cd (took about an hour). Then, I booted the computer via winxp cd, loaded the sata raid drivers (F6), then did a full repair (not recovery console). During the repair I had to insert my Video card CD to load drivers and also the Winxp cd to load some things from xp SP2. Once it was all complete, the computer loaded up perfect with all programs and settings untouched.

The only thing i had to do was run win update to reload all the patches as the repair proceedure reverts everything back to original from the CD. Since all patches and updates were previously downloaded this went quick as Winupdate didn't have to downlaod anything but only install them (that is if you don't or haven't deleted the patch folders). After that, everything is 100% as before without any problems or errors.

2) Also, before i loaded the Winxp CD i tried to boot via safe mode. That does not work in any safe mode configuration. It loaded a few drivers, got stuck on one and then just rebooted the PC.

Thanks Mudclaw for all the help! Hope this also helps anyone else that might run into the same issues.

DJ

 

djrags,

I'm glad you got it to work.

May I ask what hardware you used during the procedure?
Motherboard brand/model, chipset or Brand Name computer model.

It will give me a comparison when I do my test since my hardware is undoubtedly different.

 

MudCrab,
My specs are as follows:

1) Asus MB P5LD2, (ICH7R Southbridge Raid Controller on board)
2) Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13ghz e6400
3) 1GBx2 DDR2 533Mhz
4) Nvidia Geforce 6600 256MB
5) Seagate 320GB SATA HD x 2 (identical) Raid 0 Config of course

Hope this helps!!
DJ

 

Also, I just remembered something that i wanted to note for the non advanced Acronis users. When you load the image to the newly configured Raid 0 drives, make sure you only load the partition. That way it will give you the option to increase the size of the partition to the maximum available. My original drive was only 250GB. My Raid 0 config gives me 598GB so i had to definetely increase the size of the partition.

Thanks.

 

I got my hard drives yesterday and got them installed them today. It took some web searching and probably a dozen restores before I got it worked out, but I finally managed to convert from a non-RAID setup to a RAID 0 array without having to run Windows repair.

This is what I did that worked:
Set BIOS SATA mode to IDE (non-RAID)
Installed XP normally on one drive
Installed MB drivers and nVidia SATA drivers
Created base TI image of drive
Manually installed the NVRAID driver (force install since no hardware found)
Rebooted and set BIOS to RAID mode, but didn’t enable any of the drives in a RAID
Booted back into XP
XP detected the drives and installed the RAID driver
Then I created another TI image
Rebooted into BIOS and activated the first two SATA drives as RAID enabled
Rebooted and pressed F10 to setup a RAID 0 array using the two drives
Booted to TI and restored the previous TI image to the RAID array
Booted into Windows which then installed the driver for the RAID array
Rebooted to complete the install

The computer specifications:
Board: MSI P6N SLI-FI
NB: nVidia nForce 650i SLI (C55)
SB: nVidia nForce 430i (MCP51)
1GB DDR2 800MHz RAM
2x250GB Seagate 7200.10 SATA2 hard drives
1x80GB Seagate SATA hard drive
Windows XP Pro

 

Sharing my experience non-Raid -> Raid 0

The advice on this forum is top notch!

Over the last few months I've gradually upgraded my system to:
Antec Sonata III case w/500W power supply
Asus M2A-VM mainboard
2 GB DDR2 800 RAM (cheap stuff from newegg)
AMD Athlon X2 5200+ 65W cpu
2x 500gb Maxtor Basic hard drives (the compusa $99 specials)
Liteon Lightscribe IDE DVD burner
140mm Fans w/120mm adapters
PNY SATA II RAID 0/1 PCIe I/O card ($50 at best buy)
Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit and Office 2007 Enterprise (WISC student
software for part/full time Wisconsin students - under $200 for both!)
Hopefully someday Visual Studio (if I can get the patches to recognize
the location of my install)
Acronis TrueImage 9.1 Workstation with Universal Restore


When I removed my 36GB Raptor (yes, I got one when they first came out and feel it was one of the best computer parts I've ever bought), I tried to restore the image to the newly installed RAID 0 disks - and ATI hung. Then I found this forum, and went to find the drivers on Asus' web site. However, all the Vista 64 bit drivers were labeled as 'beta - for testing purposes only'. Tried as I might, I couldn't get the on-board RAID drivers to work with Vista.

Thus, I bought the PNY card. My second try it copied, but wouldn't boot - even after a repair. Finally I began to dig through this forum and found this thread. The method was simple and very easy to follow, and they worked like a charm. I also followed the advice to change the BSDedit file (as per another thread) so that I wouldn't have to do a repair - and that also worked like a charm!


I did have one advantage using the add-in card. I was able to add the RAID drivers and check that my array was recognized before cloning my main drive over to the array. Also, I now have AHCI instead of IDE mode on my SATA drive, so the 320GB Western Digital I have in the Antec MX-1 eSATA case will auto-detect when plugged in.


If your curious as to why I chose to go with RAID 0 when the performance increase is only 0-30% with a 2x to 3x increased drive failure rate, there are a few reasons. First, even with the PNY card I spent a total of $250 for 1TB of storage - which is still cheaper than buying a single drive. Second, RAID does not replace backups (and RAID 0 isn't even really a true RAID - there is no redundancy), so if one of my drive crashes I still have the other to use. Finally, for the experience of setting it up.


Both ATI and the contributors of this forum made the transition fairly painless.

What do I like the most about using ATI? Its clean and simple interface. That, and the fact that I don't have to spend 6 hours reinstalling all my programs anymore.

 

I'm thinking about purchasing a copy of TI 11 in an attempt to convert from a single 74GB Raptor Drive to RAID 0. I understand most of this post, but is there a way to determine if the RAID drivers are already installed in my system? I'm running a Dell XPS 400. The XPS has onboard hardware RAID, so is there a need for Windows drivers to support the array, or will the hardware handle the array?

I see that there are downloads for the Intel Matrix Storage Manager Application on Dell's website. How do I find out if they are already installed? If not, how do I go about a forced install of the drivers since there isn't a RAID array currenly installed?

I'm only planning on purchasing one additional Raptor drive and using that with the current drive housing the OS. I'm just afraid that I'm going to create the image and then not be able to create the array after formatting the current OS configuration. That would leave me stuck starting from scratch and we all know how much fun that can be.

Thanks for you time!!!!

 

Windows will usually not install any drivers that aren't needed. So if you're not currently in "RAID" mode, then the drivers are most likely not installed.

You have to have the RAID drivers installed for Windows to see the RAID drive.

If this program is installed, it may show up in Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel. I have avoided using this program. I prefer to have my RAID managed by the BIOS and have not used the Intel Storage Manager Program. You can do some things with it (like RAID conversions, 0+1 setups, etc.) that you can't with direct hardware (in some cases), but I prefer a "cleaner" system. However, I'm not sure how TI will see these types of setups from the TI CD since they may or may not be accessed directly by the computer's BIOS.

Download the RAID drivers (just for the chipset/hardware RAID, not the Intel Storage Manager software) and install them. As in my procedure in Post #10, I had to install the RAID drivers and then reboot and set the BIOS to RAID mode without setting up any drives in a RAID. Then a reboot allowed Windows to detect the non-RAID drives on the "RAID" setting and install the RAID drivers for the drives. You can try this with just your new hard drive connected without risking your current drive and see if it works.

Since you haven't used TI before, it would be a good idea to create a backup image of your current single drive (save it to a USB hard drive), install the new hard drive in its place and restore to it. If successful, you'll know that you can at least get back to that point easily if something goes wrong and your original drive will be safe.

 

I'll just have to make sure that I remove my secondary storage drive before trying this so the PC doesn't think I'm trying to RAID those two drives.

Excellent idea. Thanks for all your help MudCrab

 

How the RAID is setup depends on the BIOS. On my computers, I can switch the BIOS to RAID mode and then select which drives are in a RAID setup. If you switch to RAID mode and leave all the drives out of a RAID configuration, then they are detected as non-RAID drives, but still accessed through the RAID drivers. Hence the "trick" to get the RAID drivers installed before any drives are actually in a real RAID setup.

 

Hi MudCrab / all,

Quick question. I've been reading the forums trying to figure this out but I think I'm just getting confused.
I'm trying to clone an IDE drive with XP Pro onto my new RAID1 SATA array, which I've successfully setup and put xp pro onto so i can boot to it. My problem is that SATA RAID seems to need to be the primary boot to be recognised, i.e. if I boot to my IDE OS then I can't see the SATA RAID so I can't clone to it. If I boot to the SATA RAID, I can see the IDEs, but I can't clone to the SATA RAID (assumedly) because the first step of the process would delete everything on the drive, i.e. xp running TI (Home, 11) would try to delete TI then XP, then assumedly it'd crash.
I used media builder to make a booting disc to run TI from but it doesn't recognise the SATA RAID either. It sounds like making a BartPE disc to boot from *might* work, but I'm yet to see anything that makes the case convincingly.

Any thoughts?
Thanks
dez

 

Something I just thought of - could I boot to the SATA RAID OS, then clone the IDE to a new partition on the RAID, then reboot to that new partition and delete the old partition?
Does TI allow for cloning the entirety of one drive onto a partition on another?

 

Hello dez93_2000,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please be aware that cloning operation only works with disks, not partitions (i.e. it copies entire disk, and occupies entire destination disk). You can find detailed instructions on the cloning procedure in chapter 14 "Transferring the system to a new disk" of Acronis True Image 11 Home User's Guide.

Please make sure you use the latest build (8053) of Acronis True Image 11 Home. To get access to updates you should first register your software. Don't forget to recreate Acronis Bootable Rescue Media after updating.

If updating doesn't solve the problem, please try booting with "acpi=off noapic" parameter as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

If the issue persists, please collect some information to let us investigate it thoroughly:

Please create Acronis Report, Windows system information and Linux system information (sysinfo.txt) as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

you can also preload the raid driver to an OS for future raid use on a non-raid disk, it makes it easier to convert to raid if you ever choose to do so.

 

The Storage Manager Program is not the driver but just a manager. You can put your disk into RAID on mobos with intel chipsets, using the Intel drivers, and never use the STorage Manager, although, las you said, it lets you do some pretty nifty things, like error testing/correction, rebuilds, conversions, etc.

 

turned out that despite going through the sata raid install as directed by mobo manual, and raid being recognised when booting to it, i needed to also install another sata controller from gigabyte. once done i could see the array from the ide boot and hence use TI as normal. thanks for the advice guys.