lock please

[dmk11]

Facts:
a) I have 2 60gb HDs running in RAID using promise raid controller (stripe, no mirror). WinXp is installed on this and running fine.
b) I have 2 new 80gb 8mb HDs in raid that I want to use to replace my current one.
c) I don't wnat to reinstall WinXp, etc on it.

Questions:
Can I just plug in all 4 HDs on my RAID controller and setup another RAID array using just the 2x80gb HD and copy over the whole system files from one RAID array to the other? Would it really copy the boot sectors correctly, etc? Can I use the included Western Digital copying software? I also have PowerQuest Drive Image which I'm thinking of using for this.

 

[Zepper]

I'm not sure that you can have two RAID-0 arrays on the same card. Your documentation for the Promise adapter should show the supported configurations. Any good disk copying software should treat your array just like any other single drive - so should work fine. I just used the Seagate Wizard to set up (partition and copy files) my new SCSI drive and it worked great.
.bh.

 

[EricT]

I would not be to sure about the working of products like drive image... these tools may expect to "find" things on each drive that they now won't because of the raid setup and therefore refuse to work.

If your RAID controller can "hide" it's existence from the imaging software so that the software does NOT detect the 2 physical drives but only the RAID volume, then you can be sure that the software WILL work. IF on the other hand the imaging software detects each drive rather than the single RAID volume, then it will only work if there is an option to do a "sector by sector" copy rather than a more intelligent (faster) copy.

I have to agree with Zepper that you may not be able to conenct the 2 new drives to the same RAID controller (depends on the model) as a separate RAID 0 volume. A 2nd RAID card will definitely work, but that will cost you another 75-100$...

 

[Smilin]

I did nearly this exact same thing only I went from 2x40's. I just used ghost and did the hard drive shuffle. I had some spare drive space that made this a bit easier but you can still do the following (assuming you have enough space):

1. Ghost/Image the array over to one of the 80 gig drives
2. VERIFY the image - Oh the pain if you fail to do this.
3. Delete your current array & copy the image back to the 60 gig drives.
4. Build your new array
5. Copy the image back from the 60 gig drives to the new 160 gig array.

If you have spare drives or a spare computer on your home network you can make this A LOT easier.