Skip to main content

Clone 2 X SSD RAID 1 to Single HDD

Thread needs solution

It is possible to clone a RAID 1 (2 X SSD) into a single HDD?

Would the single HDD be bootable? Would the data be there and able to be read if it wasn't bootable?

0 Users found this helpful

Update: I should not have made this post before having the first real coffee for the day. You can clone raid to non-raid disk, so it should not matter if it is a SSD or HDD. According to the manual the all disks involved in the process should be attached to the same disk controller. All ports on the disk controller should be configured to Raid rather than legacy/IDE or AHIC. For consumer raid implementations all ports have the same configuration. Once the system is up and running you can changed the setting from Raid to AHIC (this is a two stage process, firstly through OS and secondly through the "bios").

Yet another Update: I missed that you are cloning to an HDD not an SSD. I have successfully cloned an IDE drive to a SATA HDD using ATI 2015 (the PC had a nVidia chipset with unified IDE/SATA on the chipset). So cloning from SATA SSD to SATA HDD should work without problems.

Warning: Only try to do this if you can deal with possibility of re-installation of your OS. While the process below works with raid function built into Intel chipsets with MBR disk (there may be issues if GPT is used, particularly if the PC fully implements UEFI ). It may not work with add-in raid cards. Before trying this make a full backup of the disk. Then test that you can restore it without issues using the Acronis boot media.

RAID 1 consists of data mirroring, without parity or striping. Therefore if you remove the raid you will end up with two identical drives. This will confuse Windows so one or both of them will not be recognised. I have done this with non-system HDD and have been able to recover both disks.

I suggest removing the raid through the raid controller bios (this can be accessed when the system boots); delete the raid, power off the PC (disconnect the power) and disconnect one of the SSDs. When the PC boots go into the PC "bios" and make sure that the the remaining SSD is selected as the first boot option.

If the PC will not boot, recover using the backup you created before commencing this process. Hopefully this will work. If you have an Intel chipset there could be issues caused by the disk signature that is written to disk that form part of a raid. Some time back I swapped the main board on a PC (the existing one had died) and when I booted up with the replacement the raid 5 configuration was recognised from the disk signatures and I did not have to manually adjust the settings.

So, there are a lot of things to consider before doing this; there may be some issues that I have forgotten. In the long term it may be less disruptive to buy a new SSD and clone the installation to the new SSD.

Ian