Moving Windows GPT mirrored boot drives (RAID 1-like) to new motherboard

[james2246]

3 hours ago, TehDwonz said:

As for moving it... I'd clone the drive as a complete image using something like the free EASEUS ToDo Backup (sector-by-sector option) to a new, single disk. Then re-create the GPT mirror afterwards. I wouldn't try and clone the mirroring tbh. Better to clone, do a test boot to make sure it works, then repeat the GPT Mirror config yourself.

EaseUS Todo Backup doesn't appear to support network drives, which is annoying because I'll have to move the 2TB WD Black from my gaming PC to my NAS which is completely full of drives.

 

I guess I don't need any data drives attached anyway if I'm only cloning the boot drive, but it means my server will be down a lot longer. Especially since I have to back it up to spinning rust. I will get it done though, unless I missed something in EaseUS or if perhaps there's another easy backup program that supports network drives?

[TehDwonz]

12 hours ago, james2246 said:

Meant to include this in the pic of my free space, but couldn't understand why the metadata folder was so small. It's actually the media folder that contains all the video preview thumbnails that take up so much space.

I was going to to ask why there is so much metadata, but this explains it. I have the thumbnail previews turned off.

Given the truly massive amount of data involved, I'm on the "back it up and stick to bare metal" side. Moving it to a VM, especially as you are not familiar, would create a huge headache for you. If it were mine, I'd just clone the boot disk to a new (bigger?) SSD. Make sure it boots on the new system, then re-create the GPT mirror later if you want - but as @Electronics Wizardysays, a single non-mirror should be fine as long as you create regular backup images. I'd consider a mirror if it were a "mission critical" server that needs 99.99% uptime, but does Plex really warrant that?

[TehDwonz]

10 hours ago, james2246 said:

EaseUS Todo Backup doesn't appear to support network drives, which is annoying because I'll have to move the 2TB WD Black from my gaming PC to my NAS which is completely full of drives.

 

I guess I don't need any data drives attached anyway if I'm only cloning the boot drive, but it means my server will be down a lot longer. Especially since I have to back it up to spinning rust. I will get it done though, unless I missed something in EaseUS or if perhaps there's another easy backup program that supports network drives?

Use the network path \\server\share as for some reason, mapped drives are not visible. This *may* be a new W10 restriction rather than the software, as I used to use mapped drives. Are you on W10 20H2?

[james2246]

Sorry @TehDwonz that I didn't respond earlier, I procrastinated for a bit while I tried gathering more information. And then when I did get started it took days. The whole thing was really a nightmare, though not as bad as it could have been.

 

And sorry this post is so long, but I wanted to be thorough because the other reason I wanted to reply to this topic is so it wasn't just another post with no resolution, especially because afaik there is none on this topic anywhere on the internet. So, long story short, it can't be done. And I would think if it were at all possible it would have been in my case since the two boards were both the same chipset (even both Gigabyte brand). Maybe if the the two motherboards were exactly the same brand and model, but I don't see why anyone would ever test that.

 

I made the clone onto the WD Black and then since I had that I was feeling brave and hoping to tell people if even the mirrored setup would survive so I tried hooking up both SSDs initially. It BSODed, although it did recognize an OS was there, it wouldn't boot. Kept saying my OS was damaged and needed to be repaired.

 

I removed one SSD and attempted repairs, but it said it was unable to fix the problem. Then I tried the other just to be certain, same thing. So I ended up reinstalling Windows on one of the SSDs, but I was still hopeful about retaining all my Plex metadata & thumbnails since I still had two other backups.

 

Once booted into Windows I followed the official Plex guide for moving the installation to another system, only this time I moved the entire Plex Media Server folder from the second SSD to the the one running Windows. I did this because as I said earlier in the thread, I'd previously tried moving only the metadata and media folders as the guide says and it did not work. It took 8 hours to move 1.4 TB, even SSD to SSD, because it was almost entirely random reads & writes of tiny files. But in the end it worked and I kept my original Plex configuration.

 

Now back to the topic of the thread, reestablishing the mirrors. Technically I've done it, though I'm still considering doing it all over again. This is because I found out that once you convert a disk to dynamic, it can't be changed back to basic without total data loss. EaseUS Partition Master claimed to be able to do this, but every time I tried it said it needed to restart for changes and when it did it always said, "Message(8196):The present device configuration and the previous configuration do not match. Press any key to reboot!"

 

The other two methods, Disk Management and CLI, are both guaranteed to lose all data so I didn't try them. Well I did, but only on the second SSD after Windows was reinstalled on the first and all my data was moved over. You see, when I reinstalled Windows on the fist SSD, it was still a dynamic disk and still contained the system and recovery partitions of the original install. These cannot be removed from a dynamic disk unless you convert it to basic first, which would result in total data loss on the entire drive. So on each boot it still presented the option to boot into the original and original backup OSes which would not work on the new machine.

 

This isn't really a problem, since the partitions are so tiny (100 MB & 15 MB), and I even was able to remove them from even showing up on each boot using MSConfig. But still the drive has 5 partitions instead of the 3 it should. This is easy enough to fix however, since I had to destructively convert the second SSD to Basic in order to reestablish the mirror, so that drive only has the 3 partitions it should. I've confirmed the mirror works with it though by choosing to boot from it instead of the primary.

 

So if one really wanted to get rid of the other two partitions on the original, the steps would be:

1 - Reinstall Windows on one of the SSDs

2 - Copy all needed data to that SSD from the second

3 - Destructively convert second SSD to Basic and delete all partitions

4 - Remove original SSD and reinstall Windows a second time on the second (now Basic) drive.

5 - Put first SSD back in and again copy all data to second (now primary boot SSD)

6 - Destructively convert original (now secondary) SSD to Basic and delete all partitions

7 - Reestablish the mirror, converting them both back to dynamic in the process

 

I stopped after step 3 and mirrored to the original SSD (with the extra System & Recovery partitions), partly because at first I didn't realize how I could fix it till it was already being done, and now because I just don't feel like going through all this again when it's all working. And the only real downsides (that I can see) are losing 115 MB of space, and knowing that those other boot options are there, even if I made it so I can't even see them. And since I set the order to be the new primary, then the new backup, then the original two, the only way it would ever even get to them is if both SSDs failed simultaneously, in which case they too would be gone by that point anyway.

 

A final note for all StableBit DrivePool / Scanner users, your original activation keys will not work, and you'll have to email them to ask for the keys to be reauthorized. I did so and they wrote me back a few hours later saying the keys were reactivated. And even in the mean time you can restart your 30-day trials so you won't have any downtime on them. DrivePool will recognize and reestablish your original pool just by recognizing the PoolPart folders on your disks. I actually haven't even reactivated them though because I've got 30 days and I'm still trying to find out if there's any problem with leaving those extra two partitions. If there is and I have to reinstall again, I don't want to have to be a pain and email them again, they might think I'm trying to get multiple licenses or something.

 

So that's everything I think. If anyone knows about some downside to having reinstalled Windows on a Dynamic disk that already had the system & recovery partitions on there that can't be removed, I'd appreciate the heads up.