Restoring the System from an existing Raid-0-array to a new Raid-0-array (harddrive exchange)
Dear board,
recently, my system crashed because some sectors in the system disk got faulty. I managed to restore the system using Acronis TrueImage, but this is only a temporary solution. I will need to replace the defective disk.
Unfortunately, the system is installed on a raid-0-array, which might make things a bit more complicated. Already when restoring the system last time, I noted a potential difficulty: at the first attempt, I uncoupled the two disks of the raid-0-array and wanted to use them without any raid. I could restore my system image to one of the disks, BUT booting windows resulted in a blue screen. According to some information I've found in the internet, the crash was most likely caused by the fact that the restored system still tried to use the raid-driver, whereas it should use the SATA-drivers instead. Re-enabling Raid-0 did the trick.
After this experience, I am a bit scared to install new drives. Is my assumption correct, that the system-image should work on new drives, as long as I install them as Raid-0-array? Or will new disks require new drivers, even if I set them up as Raid-0-array? If so, is it possible to exchange the harddisk driver in a system-image?
According to the manual, it is recommended to use the cloning feature for such a scenario. However, for that I would have to install the two new harddrives in addition to the old harddrives, and set them up as a second Raid-0-array. This is kind of beyond me and probably also beyond the capability of my PC. The manual also mentions, that when its not possible to connect old and new drive simultaneously, one could instead create an image. Am I correctly assuming that this is just a regular system-image? Is there any real disadvantage in using a system-image compared to directly cloning a harddrive (other than convenience)? More specifically: Does cloning for example automatically install the required disk-drivers / adjust the sytem to the new harddware, whereas using an image cannot do that?
Thank you very much for your advice!
Pesche
Hi MudCrab
Thank you very much for your reply. This is comforting. So, basically I will just have to switch the drives and do what I am doing every couple of days now (due to regular disk failure). Routine is always a good thing :)
Do you know by chance whether it will also work with Raid 1? Can I restore a system image which I took from a Raid 0 setup to a Raid 1 setup? If possible, I would like to use this opportunity and switch to a less error prone setup.
Kind regards
Pesche
You should be able to switch between RAID modes without problems as long as the different modes use the same driver (most do). I've done switches between RAID 0 and RAID 1 (both ways) without problems.
Awesome, thank you very much for encouraging me :) I will let you know about the outcome.
For the case it doesn't work: Do you know which registry entry / drivers / config-files I would have to change in windows, in order to make it use the new drivers? In principle it should be possible, to restore the image, boot from another medium and adjust the restored windows so that it would use the correct drivers.
But well, I just hope it will really use the same drivers :)
Best regards
Pesche
Ok, I can confirm that, MudCrab, it was no problem to exchange the harddrives, set up the new pair as Raid 1 and get my old system image running on the new raid-1 volume. Pheew, big relieve :)
Best regards
Pesche