Help with bagging RAID

[Zapple]

I am about to get rid of my RAID setup. I want to know if there is anyway of saving anyof the data that is on the two hard drives. I am going to go with a three drive setup. If I Configure the third drive, a new Maxotr 40 GB 100 as the primary drive with a clean install of 2K can I use the other two drives, IBM 45 GB deskstars, drives 2 and 3 without reformating? Here is the rest of the setup. Please let me know if I am going about this correctly. Must I use the RAID set up to use all 8 IDE's? Thanks for the help.

KT7A Raid
1 Ghz T Bird
512 MB ram
Plextor 40/16/10
Kenwood 72X
250 MB Zip Internal
G450 Dual Head
Win TV PVR
Hercules XP

 

[MichaelD]

I would:

1. Disconnect all other devices from the Primary IDE channel and put the new HD on there as master.

2. Use a Norton Ghost boot disk, boot from it, copy Drive C to Drive D.

That's it! I did this in reverse: made a 2-drive raid 0 array from the info contained on one HD. I see no reason why it wouldn't work in reverse. BTW, Norton copies the FAT table as well. You don't even need to format the drive first. Norton takes care of all that for you.

 

[Zapple]

I have Norton Ghost on a CD and have never used it. Can you guide me throught he process of what to do? I am starting to get a little scared because it sounds too easy. Thanks Zapple

 

[MichaelD]

OK. Load up Ghost. Make a Ghost Floppy w/CDrom support (it's an option...take it, you never know)

Put your blank HD as master BY ITSELF on your Primary IDE channel. Make sure it' s the only device on that channel. Safer that way.

Set Bios to boot from floppy. Put floppy in. Reboot. Ghost takes like two minutes to load up and it makes all kinds of noises. You may see messages like "driver not found/not loaded" scary looking stuff. Ignore it. I almost crapped my pants...almost

It'll load up and you'll have a familiar-looking windows drop down menu. You're going to select Copy->Local->To Disk. It'll search for all HD's. Click your raid array for "source" and click your new HD for "destination". Click OK. That's it. Prolly 20 minutes later, you'll be GTG. Don't erase anything from the RAID array until you've booted from the new HD, played around in it and have thoroughly ensured you are happy. PM me if need be. It's easy! You'll be fine.

 

[Zapple]

Can I put a blank HD on my system and back up the raid -0 array to the blank HD and then use the stand alone HD to run my rig, reformat the other two HD and then configure the system with no RAID just three HD's? If I hook up a blank HD will it show as a seperate HD from the RAID or will it automatically become the third HD in the Raid Array?

I have been told ghost will not back up a raid set up that is e=why I am asking.

Thanks Zapple