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Cannot clone RAID HDD to a SDD | TrueImage 2020

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We are having trouble cloning a HDD. We believe it is showing signs of failing. We wanted to clone it to a SSD. We launched Acronis True Image 2020. The SSD was hooked up. We selected the HDD to clone and and the SSD as the destination drive. But the buttons are grayed out. It won't let us proceed. I saw in the manual that RAIDS cannot be cloned. Is that for sure true? This is a Windows 7 computer. For whatever reason, this Dell was set up as a RAID.

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Hugh, welcome to these public User Forums.

Technically a RAID drive is normally classed as being a dynamic drive and cannot be cloned but this may depend on why RAID is being used?

Many modern NVMe type drives use RAID for performance reasons and can be cloned as they are still a single drive.

Is your HDD part of an actual RAID array or is it a single drive using RAID?

How are you attempting to perform the Clone operation?

Please see KB 56634: Acronis True Image: how to clone a disk - and in particular the paragraph copied below:

Cloning RAID disks

Cloning is supported only for simple disk partitioning systems, such as MBR and GPT. Acronis True Image cannot clone RAIDs set up as LVM or LDM. Hardware RAIDs and storage spaces can be cloned provided the environment where Acronis product is running (e.g. operating system) supports them, as Acronis True Image gets the information about RAID configuration from the environment. Cloning of a hardware RAID will work if a reboot is not required: after reboot, the operation continues in standalone version of Acronis True Image, where support of all hardware RAID configurations is not guaranteed and thus the cloning operation may fail after reboot. Acronis development team is working on improving hardware RAID support in bootable environment. 

@Steve Smith

 

Thanks for the welcoming and reply.

 

This isn't a NVMe but a standard hard drive. It is in MBR as we check that in disk management. 

 

It is a single drive using a raid. We do not know why Dell configured this computer that way. We found out when we were trying to clone it.

 

We just hooked up the SSD that we were cloning to via a SATA to USB adapter from the computer's HDD were were cloning. We started Acronis and tried to go through the steps but it was grayed out. This is how we did it in the past, with no issues. 

 

We did not use a Acronis bootable media.

 

I am confused as to what that paragraph is saying. Is it saying that it cannot be cloned using the Acronis bootable media because it needs a working Windows OS environment? Or is it saying that it needs to be cloned using the Acronis bootable media

 

Cloning has more limitations than backup and recovery.  Personally, I would just try to take a backup of the source drive, save it to another location (external USB, NAS or network share) and then restore that image to the new drive.

You should be able to do this all in Windows, but personally, I would still use the offline rescue media - just in case.  There are instances when you want to recover an OS backup that it will want to reboot the system this was initiated on, then it will modify the booloader and replace it with a temporary Acronis Linux environment.  This can cause issues for the original OS if it fails to do this and revert back - especially when RAID is involved as drivers may not be present in the linux environment.

Long story short, it is safest and best to use the offline rescue media to restore full OS backup images and in most cases, when cloning too.

It is a single drive using a raid. We do not know why Dell configured this computer that way. We found out when we were trying to clone it.

It is odd way to set things up - do you know if it is RAID 1 or RAID 0. I know signle disk RAID is possible, but it does not add much in the way of resilience if RAID 1 and I cannot  see how RAID 0 would increase write or read speeds but I could be wrong.

I am wondering if the drive being cloned rather being RAID is one of the early hybrid drives that caused problems when trying to use ATI for backup and cloning.

Ian

 

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

Cloning has more limitations than backup and recovery.  Personally, I would just try to take a backup of the source drive, save it to another location (external USB, NAS or network share) and then restore that image to the new drive.

You should be able to do this all in Windows, but personally, I would still use the offline rescue media - just in case.  There are instances when you want to recover an OS backup that it will want to reboot the system this was initiated on, then it will modify the booloader and replace it with a temporary Acronis Linux environment.  This can cause issues for the original OS if it fails to do this and revert back - especially when RAID is involved as drivers may not be present in the linux environment.

Long story short, it is safest and best to use the offline rescue media to restore full OS backup images and in most cases, when cloning too.

Thanks for the answer. I should have done my research.  I read that backup and restore is usually safer anyways and is just one extra step and you get the same results as cloning.

I am going to try the backup and restore method. 

The old/source HDD is still working just slowing down. So, just to keep things simple, could we try to bypass the rescue media method, and just back up and recovery to the new SSD through Windows? If it fails (like the issues you were talking about), we could still just go back to the old/source HDD, correct?. Or will those issues have affected the old/source HDD as well?

- I'm just confused if those issues you were talking about will only affect the image on the new SSD or if it will affect the old/source image as well. 

 

I'm just not sure how to restore the image from a network share to the new SSD using the rescue media since it's offline and Linux.

IanL-S wrote:

It is a single drive using a raid. We do not know why Dell configured this computer that way. We found out when we were trying to clone it.

It is odd way to set things up - do you know if it is RAID 1 or RAID 0. I know signle disk RAID is possible, but it does not add much in the way of resilience if RAID 1 and I cannot  see how RAID 0 would increase write or read speeds but I could be wrong.

I am wondering if the drive being cloned rather being RAID is one of the early hybrid drives that caused problems when trying to use ATI for backup and cloning.

Ian

 

I don't know if it is RAID 1 or RAID 0. 

 

But I believe it is a single disk. All I saw in Device Manager was one HDD:

ST9500423AS, which doesn't look like a hybrid drive to me.

 

Also, the Raid Controller was listed on Device Manager as:

Intel Desktop/Workstation/Server Express Chipset SATA RAID Controller

Hugh, you could avoid the rescue media for the recovery... but that is where the issue is likely to occur.  Some bios firmware prevent the system from rebooting into the temporary Linux rescue media (which is loaded when you do this anyway for an OS recovery) and that is what can mess up your original drive from booting!  This can happen if the bios doesn't allow it (things like safeboot enabled), if your disk uses encryption, if your backups exist on a network share instead of a local one, or if the temp Linux rescue environement doesn't have drivers for your hardware (usually a USB controller driver or a storage driver is what gets people).

Plus, if your computer can't boot - either it dies or starting the recovery from the OS causes the dreaded issues, then you will need rescue media to get back again so it's a good idea to get familiar with it anyway and make sure it sees all of your hardware and can successfully restore.

The bios will tell you how the hard drive is booting (in AHCI or RAID).  Many new systems come with RAID by default, even if only using a single hard drive!  This is especially true when the system comes from the manufacturer with a PCIe NVME hard drive. And if it is in RAID mode, then the Linux rescue media can cause issues.

Yeah, the ST9500423AS seems like a regular drive to me too.  That said, your system doesn't have some other caching SSD or anything like that does it?  That was a semi-popular config before hybrid drives became mainstream and before SSD's and PCIe NVME drives were so easily available. 

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

Hugh, you could avoid the rescue media for the recovery... but that is where the issue is likely to occur.  Some bios firmware prevent the system from rebooting into the temporary Linux rescue media (which is loaded when you do this anyway for an OS recovery) and that is what can mess up your original drive from booting!  This can happen if the bios doesn't allow it (things like safeboot enabled), if your disk uses encryption, if your backups exist on a network share instead of a local one, or if the temp Linux rescue environement doesn't have drivers for your hardware (usually a USB controller driver or a storage driver is what gets people).

Plus, if your computer can't boot - either it dies or starting the recovery from the OS causes the dreaded issues, then you will need rescue media to get back again so it's a good idea to get familiar with it anyway and make sure it sees all of your hardware and can successfully restore.

The bios will tell you how the hard drive is booting (in AHCI or RAID).  Many new systems come with RAID by default, even if only using a single hard drive!  This is especially true when the system comes from the manufacturer with a PCIe NVME hard drive. And if it is in RAID mode, then the Linux rescue media can cause issues.

Yeah, the ST9500423AS seems like a regular drive to me too.  That said, your system doesn't have some other caching SSD or anything like that does it?  That was a semi-popular config before hybrid drives became mainstream and before SSD's and PCIe NVME drives were so easily available. 

Thanks for the tips. Sorry I'm still getting confused here.

Just to confirm, you are saying a temporary Linux rescue media is loaded anyways (on a reboot) when doing the recovery through windows OS? So it's best to just start it from the bootable rescue media from the start? 

Since this Hard drive is in RAID mode, and you said "Linux rescue media" can cause issues with RAID HDDs. Does that just include the temporary rescue media or the bootable rescue media as well? 

If what I think I understand is correct, I plan on doing the bootable rescue media now. It sounds like it's worth the extra time. But just to confirm, with the bootable rescue media, I will have to back up the source drive to a local storage?

btw, I confirm this HDD is a RAID, I just checked it in the bios. Secure boot disabled, it's on Legacy boot. I didn't see any other SSD in there. 

 

Just to confirm, you are saying a temporary Linux rescue media is loaded anyways (on a reboot) when doing the recovery through windows OS? So it's best to just start it from the bootable rescue media from the start? 

Yes, correct, in almost all instances where an OS is being recovered, a reboot is needed and will go into the temporary LInux rescue environment.  It is essentially the same LInux environment found in rescue media (if you download the default .iso or make a linux rescue media - we recommend making WinRE or WinPE rescue media and that is what it will try to create by default from 2019 forward).

Since this Hard drive is in RAID mode, and you said "Linux rescue media" can cause issues with RAID HDDs. Does that just include the temporary rescue media or the bootable rescue media as well? 

It can if the rescue media is Linux based.  It's really a lack of driver support for IRST (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) in many cases that can prevent a RAID drive from being found.  However, a bios with secure boot enabled can also prevent Linux media from loading, or if you have bitlocker or some other encryption, you're out of luck too since the drive would remain locked in either situation.

If what I think I understand is correct, I plan on doing the bootable rescue media now. It sounds like it's worth the extra time. But just to confirm, with the bootable rescue media, I will have to back up the source drive to a local storage?

Correct.  Yes, back it up somewhere else, not on the source drive and not on your intended destination drive (if they will be different).  Best to use an additional external USB drive in most cases as that's the easiest.  A network share, NAS, or something like that could work too, but USB locally attached drives are the easiest to work with.

btw, I confirm this HDD is a RAID, I just checked it in the bios. Secure boot disabled, it's on Legacy boot. I didn't see any other SSD in there. 

Great to be sure!  Since you are legacy booting the drive, if your bios supports UEFI booting too, make sure you boot the rescue media in legacy mode too.  You want to be consistent... not as important for the backup, but is very important for the recovery.  How you boot the rescue media determines if the restore drive OS is legacy or UEFI!  It's the same with Windows installer disks too.  Use your bios one-time boot menu to specifically pick the rescue media boot mode.  

Examples:

https://kb.acronis.com/content/59877