Skip to main content

Image single drive old server to a new RAID 5 server.

Thread needs solution

I have a client that has a power Edge 600c server with 1 250GB Hard drive, and Acronis Backup and Recovery 10 with universal restore. He obtained a new Power Edge system with 3 hard drives each is 1TB and configured with RAID 5.

How should I efficiently image the old server and restore that image to the new one retaining the RAID configuration? I have never used Acronis and it seems that it will do the job right with the right steps. Any help would be appreciated? Thank you

0 Users found this helpful

Hello Noor,

Thank you for your post and welcome to the forum. I will definitely assist you with your question.

This is how our software works with RAID. If it detects them properly it will show a regular hard drive. The important thing to remember is that if you are restoring to dissimilar hardware (different controler, new motherboard or chipset) you will need to use Acronis Universal Restore. It is a component which needs to be purchased separately.

Here are the steps:

1. Create a backup of the Power Edge 600C server. The backup can be performed in Windows with Acronis installed or using the bootable media without installing the program.

2. Using the bootable media with the Acronis Universal Restore component you restore the backup to the new Power Edge with RAID 5.

Please note, Acronis Universal Restore is not used when creating backups, it is used during the recovery.

Acronis software uses Windows API to detect hardware in Windows. The bootable media is based on Linux which can sometimes lack drivers for a specific hardware piece. In such cases our Support team creates the proper media. I would recommend to download and try out Acronis Backup and Recovery 10 first to see how it runs on both of your machines, so that you can be certain that when you are finally migrating, there will be no compatibility issues. Please take a look at the list of supported operating systems here.

If you need additional help, please let me know.

Thank you.

Hi Noor. You will need to download the "F6" drivers for the new Dell Raid controller from Dell's web page and when you do the restore (with Universal Restore) tell it to search for drivers and tell it where to search for those drivers.

The simplest way to do it would be with a large external USB hard drive:

1) Boot the Acronis Bootable Media on the old server and make the backup to a external USB hard drive

2) Download the F6 drivers from Dell for the new raid controller to that same external USB hard drive

3) Haul the external USB hard drive over to the new server and boot the Acronis bootable media. Do a restore with Universal Restore from the image on the external USB hard drive and tell it to serach for drivers wherever you saved the new raid drivers

It works well and if you hit a snag there are a ton of people on this forum that can help you out