Restoring Acronis System Image to New 4K Sector Size WD Raid-1 Array Drive (s)

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I have a Windows Vista System running on a Dell Inspiron 530s and 2  Seagate 250GB Hard Drives configured as a single 250 GB hard drive in a Raid 1 array (mirrored drives, Intel Raid Controller). My 250 GB hard drive is currently divided into 3 partitions of C: 180GB, D: 60 GB and E: 10 GB. One of the 2 hard drives in the Raid array has failed, leaving me currently running a degraded Raid system with only one 250 GB drive operational (the failed (mirrored) one has been removed).

I decided to go ahead and replace BOTH drives even though only one has failed so far and have 2 Western Digital Caviar 1 TB hard drives (which are 4k sector AF drives) ready to install. I also have Acronis True Image Home 9 backup software installed and have an up to date image of my current drive saved on external storage.

It's my understanding that Vista is “Advanced Function 4K Sector Size Drive” aware and should require no alignment formatting before being placed into service in that system. My plan is to remove my remaining 250 GB hard drive and replace it with BOTH of the new WD drives (which would restore the Raid 1 to fully functioning condition). I have already upgraded my Vista system to the latest level of driver for the Intel Raid Controller. The Raid controller and other hardware should take care of rebuilding the Raid array hardware wise so that the drives appear as one single drive to the software.

Once the new drives are up and running, I will then restore my system image backup to the new Raid-1 drives, using the tools in Acronis True Image. That should leave me with a functioning duplicate of my old system on the new dual 1 TB drives. The only problem still remaining at that point would be the fact that the 1 TB system drive (s) would still only reflect the partitioning of the old 250 GB system and the remaining 750 GB would be unused.

First of all, is my plan adequate? Is there anything that I have missed or failed to consider? Beyond that, how can I repartition the new 1TB drive to take advantage of additional 750 GB of space? Should that be done before, during or after the restore of the system image....and can it be done using Acronis True Image?

Finally, are there any limitations in True Image Home 9 that would keep me from doing what I proposed above? I also have the True Image Western Digital Edition but I can't install that until I have gotten the at least one of the WD drives installed. Even then, it is based on TI Home 9 so I wouldn't think it would be much different from the copy of True Image 9 that I already have installed.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Wed, 01/18/2012 - 02:04
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mvp

Scott,

First, make sure that your ATI 2009 recovery CD sees your RAID 1 disk correctly: ie it sees only one disk. Otherwise, you will need to fix this, or you will have to try to backup and restore one single disk in the array, and hope that the disk controller will be able to rebuild the array later.

Second, create a full disk and partition backup (include all partitions on the RAID that ATI shows you) of the remaining disk and store this on a USB disk.

Third, put both disks in, if the Acronis recovery CD sees the raid correctly, or a single disk if you have no other option. Boot the computer on the Windows installation DVD and recreate your partitions so that the first partition has an offset of 1MB, and each partition has a whole number of MB (1MB=1024x1024bytes) as size. Take advantage or your bigger disk! Make sure you mark active the right partition.

Fourth, boot on the recovery CD and recover your partitions one by one. Remember that the CD will show you drive letters different from what Windows shows you. Make sure to put labels to your partitions that use the Windows drive labels.
For example, rename your old C:\ partition to "OLD_C" and name the new one "NEW_C". That will make it easy when you use the recovery CD and your C:\"NEW_C" partition will suddenly show up as F:\"NEW_C" or whatever. Do not attempt to fix the drive letters. Just make sure the right partition is going to the right one on the right disk.

Once the system boots, you might have to run some fixes discussed here: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/25558

Wed, 01/18/2012 - 05:05
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Hi Pat, thanks for your response. It was very helpful. First of all, I downloaded the updated Intel RST driver (which as of this writing is 10.8.0.1003) and installed it. I then backed up the system in the manner you recommended and put the two new hard drives in. Once I restarted the system, the two new drives showed up in "Setup" as two separate hard drives which were non-Raid connected (and which, of course contained no bootable OS at that point).

Since I needed the updated Intel driver on my backed-up system in order to reconnect the Raid-1 array, I went ahead and restored that system instead of going to the Vista Install Disk at this point. Acronis saw the new drives as two separate drives of course since the Raid array was not connected yet so I told Acronis to just restore the system to one of the two new drives.

Once I rebooted it, the Intel Matrix Storage Manager (i.e. RST 10.8.0.1003) found the two new drives immediately and prompted me to install them in a Raid array if I wanted to. I went ahead and did that and immediately got a message saying that the Raid array was migrating data from the established new drive to the new blank one. Since they are large drives (1 TB), this process took somewhere around 5-6 hours. I suspect that I could probably have saved some of that time if I had used Acronis to restore my backed up system individually to *each* of the two hard drives in sequence before connecting them as the Raid array. I simply didn't think of it in time, however. In that case, the Intel Raid RST wouldn't have had to migrate the data from one hard drive to the other.

I rebooted once again and now had the full Raid configuration using both of the new drives and with the same partition setup as in my system on the old 250GB drives. The only difference now was that I had an additional 700GB (approx) that was unallocated).

Since I now had my regular, everyday Vista system running again and the only thing left at this point was to repartition the system, I decided to go ahead and repartition the new drives using tools that would run on that system. Since I already had a current, known good full backup of my running system, I decided there would be little risk if I accidentally destroyed data during the repartition.

Since the Disk Management function in a running Vista system is somewhat limited in its repartitioning capabilities, I found a nifty program called “Easeus Partition Manager Home Partition”l. It is very similar to “Partition Magic” and is free for home use. It has an excellent GUI and in my opinion is far superior to “Diskpart.exe” in Vista. It worked beautifully and I was able to create and format several new partitions in the unallocated space and re-size all of my partitions the way I wanted them (and with the system operating normally the entire time).

I also installed the Western Digital Alignment tool but once I went to run it, it determined that all of my partitions were already fully aligned for the 4K sector size and that I didn't need to run it. I also haven't installed the MS ESENT hotfix (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2470478)yet since I haven't been having any problems so far. I will either go ahead and install it if I start having those problems or it may have already been applied during a MS update. I just need to research that.

Thanks again for your help and suggestions.

Thu, 01/19/2012 - 22:35