raid in one drive

[johnyb98]

Good morning.

 

There is a system with two identical HDDs: 2 x WD SATA II 500GB.

O/S:Windows 7 Ultimate

 

These two drives are in a raid array.

Is it possible to clone these two drives (via s/w) in one image, and afterwards to restore this image to

a third SATA drive, in order to work with this third drive alone?

 

Thank you!

[ShinGnosis]

If you can see them as one system drive (c: for instance) in your computer you can clone them no problem. Just make sure you have enough space on the third drive.

[SaladFingers]

Yes you can, but that third disk won't really be on RAID. Your two other disks being in RAID are seen as one disk into your system. You can clone from it (them) just like you would with any single drive.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey there johnyb98,

 

What are the models of your current drives? What about the brand and model of the third drive? 

Generally you can clone a RAID array onto a single drive. What would your end goal be? Would you like to upgrade your storage pool or replace the RAID or would you like to include more drives in the RAID? 

You would need a drive with at least 1TB capacity in order to safely clone your array.

 

Captain_WD.

[johnyb98]

Hi.

Two current drives are WD WD5000AAKS, and current drive is Seagate ST50DM002.

End goal is to remove two RAID drives (removing RAID row), and install Windows 7 in the third drive, which will be one single drive on system.

Because of time pressure, I have already deleted RAID array via RAID BIOS, and start installing Windows on Seagate HDD.

If I had time, my intention would be as follows:clone RAID array (o/s, progs, data, etc) in one single drive. Not because of storage. In RAID 0 that two drives were, total capacity was 1TB.

And usage space was less than 50GB. So, I would like to clone to one drive of a 500GB (e.g. this Seagate), and leave it alone on system.

 

I tried with CloneCD 6 Enterprise, but, because I do not know well enough to use the prog, I did not make it.

I do not know. Maybe this was a wrong way to try, and another way was the correct one.

If you have a little time, can you please tell me how would I make it?

 

ps Fortunately, no data that I wanted was on raid drives.

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

Hey again  

 

Sadly, the cloning procedure moves everything bit by bit and you would need at least a drive that is as big as the initial drive (or set of drives). In your case you would need at least a 1TB target drive in order to successfully clone your array. Otherwise the cloning process will leave out everything past the 500GB mark and if there's anything there it will be left out. 

 

Most cloning programs won't allow you to proceed if you have a smaller destination drive. You might be able to find a program that clones only partitions and reduce the size of the partition on the RAID array to below 500GB and attempt cloning it, but all of this involves a great amount of data loss risk, let alone that you are doing all of this on a RAID0 array. 

 

I strongly recommend using NAS/RAID- class drives for RAID arrays and to keep backups of the data, especially if the RAID doesn't offer any redundancy whatsoever (like RAID0).

 

Captain_WD.

[johnyb98]

So, on the one hand I was lucky that I wanted no data on drives, and on the other, since RAID array was in RAID 0, and I needed a 1TB drive to move everything to it, the best solution I chose, was the best one I could give, I guess, since so small space was in use, and I didn't want to go to a 1TB HDD (pointless for my pc usage).

 

Thank you for all help!!

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

 

There are other ways to migrate data other than cloning. You can look into system image restore which is a function of your OS. Here's a link: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/restore-computer-from-system-image-backup#1TC=windows-7

Another way is to simply copy/paste everything besides the OS and the programs. You would need to first maek a clean install of the Os on the new drive plus all the programs.

There are also third-party backup tools that allow you to migrate your OS and programs from one drive location to another.

 

Captain_WD.