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Cloning from 3-Disk Raid5 to a Single SSD

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Looking for some feedback on how to accomplish this.  We have several configuration where the RAID interface is dated but the computer itself is fine.  It makes more sense to replace with a single SSD but I cannot find a process that will basically convert a RAID set to a single drive.  Probably looking in the wrong place for info or possibly overthinking it.

Feedback is appreciated.

Thanks!

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Typically, you would take a full disk image of the RAIDed drive(s) - forget cloning in this situation as Dynamic disks are not supported for cloning. Plus, you want a good, current backup, just in case and need it for the restore to the new single drive. 

If you have a free sata port, restore the image to the new single disk attached to it. Go into the bios and change the boot order to boot from the single drive. That should really be it. If no free sata port, break the raid in the bios and remove the current disks and then install the new drive. At that point, your old data is gone, so that's why you want the backup, in case you need to restore back to the RAID (recreate it first).

Bios settings are probably the most challenging here. 

Main thing... Get a good full backup of whatever is in RAID now. Worse case, you restore that back to the RAID drives. Ideally, use the least important system to test on too. Windows 10 handles hardware changes a lot better than Win7 as well, but this should work on any 

Thanks for the detailed reply.  My concern is whether or not Windows 7 will handle the HW change (I know Windows 10 will).

So to verify, I would load Acronis directly on the system with the RAID5 config and run the backup from there (assuming it will do this though a boot-time backup process).

Thanks!

There should be no Windows 7 specific issues to doing as you wish. In the past I have found that moving between RAID and non-RAID configurations to create back then restore to the new configuration. I use RAID 5 - even with SATA 2 connection I found that using SSD rather than 10000 rpm HDD resulted in considerable performance enhancement.

You do not say what sort of RAID configuration you have and if the OS is on the RAID. If the latter then I strongly recommend using the recovery media to create the backup and do the recovery.

Ian

I agree with Ian.  Since you are using the same system, as long as you keep the SATA mode as RAID in the bios (don't switch to AHCI, but leave it as RAID anyway), Windows 7 should handle this change just fine.

Where Windows 7 gets screwed up when you move from a true RAID is when you change the SATA mode to AHCI.  Windows 7 doesn't handle this natively and you have to prep the OS first.  There is really no reason to change the mode from RAID to AHCI though, you're not losing or gaining any performance by doing this here.  In fact, newer drives (PCIeNVME) actually get better performance in RAID mode (even for a single drive), because AHCI has a limited queue depth that prevents them from reaching their full potential.

All that said... take a full disk backup of the RAID first and foremost.  Then proceed to recover to the new single drive and make sure the bios boot priority is set to the new drive before trying to boot it up.  Ideally, you would also want to remove the existing RAID disks so there is no possible disk ID collision. Depending on your RAID controller though, it might bawk if you just remove the drives without breaking the RAID first.  I don't think you'll have a collision as long as you specifically change the boot priority first.

And... double check if your Win 7 is legacy or UEFI mode.  You'll want to make sure to boot your rescue media to match (use your one time boot menu option in the bios). How you boot the rescue media will determine if the recovery is legacy (MBR) or UEFI (GPT).  In this case, you'll want to make sure it is the same as the original setup. 

Good point about removing the raid configuration. I have never had issues with the controller, but there can be problems if you try to use the disks subsequently, particularly if you have mirror raid configuration as both disks have the same disk signature. 

Ian