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Migrating from RAID0(Striping) to RAID1(Mirroring)

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Hello there,

I have an important project that I am working on to migrate a computer from a RAID0 to RAID1 configuration. The computer is about 1 - 2 years old and is apart of the Dell Optiplex family. It has an onboard Intel RAID controller, and there is only one logical partition that was made using 2 physical drives at 150GB each.

The tricky part is that I do not have two extra hard-drives that I can use to do this. What I currently have at my disposal is an external USB hard-drive. What would be the best way to accomplish this?

PS: I've tried to clone the logical drive using the Easy Migrate Wizard to the USB hard-drive (Had to plug it in directly for it to work) and had issues getting the drive to boot into Windows 7 afterwards.

Thanks,
Andre

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Andre:

Changing from one RAID mode to another on the same controller should be easy since Windows already has the correct RAID driver installed. I went in the opposite direction recently (from RAID 1 to RAID 0) with an older Dell machine. Here's the procedure:

1. Back up your existing disk array (back up; not clone) to the external USB hard disk. Include all partitions in the backup.

2. Validate the backup to be sure that it contains no errors.

3. Shut down the OS and reboot. Stop the boot process at the Intel storage manager screen. Delete the current RAID array (you will lose all data on the disks) and set up a new RAID 1 array.

4. Boot the PC from the Acronis recovery CD and restore the backup to the new array.

Before doing any of this you need to be sure that the Acronis recovery CD works properly with your hardware. If you haven't tested this yet you need to. Boot the PC from the recovery CD and confirm that you see the current array as one disk. If the array appears as two separate disks then do not proceed. Contact Acronis support for driver support. The recovery CD must be able to see your array as an array (not as independent disks) in order for it to be able to restore the saved image to the array. The Intel storage manager is widely supported so this probably isn't going to be an issue but it needs to be checked before proceeding.

P.S. I just noticed your statement about the array containing only one logical partition. So is this just a data array with no operating system? If so, the process is even easier. Just copy the files from the current array to the external USB disk. Do step 3 above to delete the RAID 0 array and set up a new RAID 1 array. Reboot into Windows and format the array. Copy the data back from the external USB disk to the array. No imaging product is necessary to do this if the array contains only data.