Clone ?

[StarTrek133]

Hey Everyone, 

 

Need some help / advice  .. 

 

My current data drive is a hardware raided drive .. I need someway to clone that array so I can pull the hard drives and use them in the new array and then copy everything back .. The computer that the array is currently in is a windows 10 machine .. I could use the file explorer and do a copy and paste , but we all know how good windows is at that .. So looking for some other software that could help .. 

 

Thoughts ? advice ? 

 

Thanks .. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

You can use other file copy tools like robocopy, does basically the same thing as explorer,e with a few more options with things like permissions. Nothing wrong with copy and paste though, it will work fine here.

 

There are also tools to verify the files are the same on the old and new array, you can do that.

[An0maly_76]

Maybe hardware RAID would conflict with this, but I seem to recall something in my BIOS RAID options that mentioned mirroring. Maybe this would be a simple solution?

[StarTrek133]

Thanks @An0maly_76for the information .. the trouble with mirroring is it would put the drive into a format that when I redo everything I would have no way to copy it back .. Hope that makes sense .. 

[An0maly_76]

2 minutes ago, StarTrek133 said:

Thanks @An0maly_76for the information .. the trouble with mirroring is it would put the drive into a format that when I redo everything I would have no way to copy it back .. Hope that makes sense .. 

Makes total sense. Microsoft could screw up a one car funeral, yet they insist on adding more crap to an auri broken dumpster fire before fixing its existing issues.

[wseaton]

If the logical drive thats on the RAID is being used by windows all you need to do is install any drive backup utility like Macrium. Just image the volume to another location (external drive, etc,) blow away the RAID, rebuild it, and then re image it back.

 

If windows is actually booting from that RAID things are more complex, but I have tricks to get around that as well. I dont think that's the case here.

[wseaton]

11 hours ago, An0maly_76 said:

Makes total sense. Microsoft could screw up a one car funeral, yet they insist on adding more crap to an auri broken dumpster fire before fixing its existing issues.

Actually Microsoft assumes you will know how to use a volume shadow copy based tool that's been around since Windows 2000 and can be utilized by any number of free tools. How the hell do you think I can back up and restore a Windows production server? 

[An0maly_76]

2 hours ago, wseaton said:

Actually Microsoft assumes you will know how to use a volume shadow copy based tool that's been around since Windows 2000 and can be utilized by any number of free tools. How the hell do you think I can back up and restore a Windows production server? 

*shrugs* That's just one of Microsoft's many problems, though -- not everybody has the 'mad skillz' requirements they 'engineer' into everything. Once a wizard with BASIC / Turbo Basic, I failed horribly at C++, demoting myself to power user. Partially due to initial MS-DOS / Win95 cross-compatibility issues.

 

I've since discovered autism-related focus / memory issues make my mind a 60TB SATA RAID with random read / write failures. Autism also makes major changes much more of a disruption. So naturally, once XP was stable, I fought transitioning further like a demon, after the dumpster fire I bought around 2008 or so.

 

Mistakes were made.

 

First mistake - Sony Vaio.

Second mistake - Came with Vista.

Third mistake - Let them BS me into believing it could be reverted to XP (I'd heard a bit about VIsta already).

Fourth mistake - Didn't back out of the deal when they handed me burned copies of obviously pirated XP.

Fifth mistake - Not returning it at the first hiccup (due to Best Buy's moronic return policy, third week).

 

Hence In 2018, I still ran XP on a Dell Dimension 4700 (3.0 P4) and a Panasonic Toughbook CF-30 (1.8 Celeron) until a PSU failure nuked the Dell and the Panasonic's screen died soon after. I've struggled getting up to speed with Win10 ever since, as I don't do well with constant changes (set-it-and-forget-it kind of guy).

 

You could say I enjoy computers and tech, and can absorb certain things efficiently, but lack the ability to keep up with such fast-paced development and get highly frustrated when random Win10 updates change things the way I had them (especially continually restoring Cortana after I've disabled it). Hence, at times I feel like a fish out of water here.

 

What to do? Kinda like being forced to buy new cars long after you no longer can understand enough to service it yourself.

Edited August 26, 2022 by An0maly_76
Revised, more info