Clone RAID 0 Boot Drives

[jthorpein]

I have a Sony Vaio model VGC-RA830G desktop running Windows XP. A few months back it came up with an warning that one of the drives was failing in the 2 drive RAID 0 array that's used to boot from and to back up. At that point I didn't have the funds to get new drives, so I shut it down and stored it in the closet until I could get some drives. 

Fast forward to December and my roommate's brother is wanting some home videos made into a DVD (this is the system I use to capture and make DVD video's with). I was able to pick up 2 new 1 TB drives to replace both the older 2 x 1 TB drives that are in the bootable RAID 0 config as well as a Inatek FD2005 cloning dock.

I have tried the offline cloning option of the Inatek FD2005 from each of the old drives to the new drives. However, when trying to boot from the new drives it comes up with "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key" Thinking one of the drives fell out of the RAID again, I went to the "Intel(R) Application Acclerator RAID Option ROM v4.0.0.6211" console I seen it show the drives as "Non-RAID" Creating a RAID volume put both drives as "Member Disk(0)" and the RAID Volume status became "Normal" and bootable.

My question's are:

1.) How can I put these back in the RAID array and boot from them as I was able to before (keeping all my files)?

Then:

2.) How can I clone the original 2 disk RAID 0 set over to the new drives and be able to boot from like the originals?

[dalekphalm]

22 minutes ago, jthorpein said:

I have a Sony Vaio model VGC-RA830G desktop running Windows XP. A few months back it came up with an warning that one of the drives was failing in the 2 drive RAID 0 array that's used to boot from and to back up. At that point I didn't have the funds to get new drives, so I shut it down and stored it in the closet until I could get some drives. 

Fast forward to December and my roommate's brother is wanting some home videos made into a DVD (this is the system I use to capture and make DVD video's with). I was able to pick up 2 new 1 TB drives to replace both the older 2 x 1 TB drives that are in the bootable RAID 0 config as well as a Inatek FD2005 cloning dock.

I have tried the offline cloning option of the Inatek FD2005 from each of the old drives to the new drives. However, when trying to boot from the new drives it comes up with "Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key" Thinking one of the drives fell out of the RAID again, I went to the "Intel(R) Application Acclerator RAID Option ROM v4.0.0.6211" console I seen it show the drives as "Non-RAID" Creating a RAID volume put both drives as "Member Disk(0)" and the RAID Volume status became "Normal" and bootable.

My question's are:

1.) How can I put these back in the RAID array and boot from them as I was able to before (keeping all my files)?

Then:

2.) How can I clone the original 2 disk RAID 0 set over to the new drives and be able to boot from like the originals?

Ideally the proper way to clone them would be as follows:

 

1. Leave the original RAID0 drives connected to the motherboard, with RAID configuration enabled.

2. Connect the 2nd set of drives, boot into the RAID config, create a second RAID0 array.

3. Boot to a cloning utility (off of USB/CD/DVD), such as Clonezilla.

4. Perform a Device to Device clone, select the 1st RAID0 array as source, and the 2nd RAID0 array as target.

5. After cloning has completed, remove the original RAID0 array, and you should now be able to boot off of the new array.

 

Though honestly, this is one reason why RAID0 is a pain in the ass to use, and usually not worth the effort.

 

Please also ensure that ANYTHING IMPORTANT on the RAID0 array is being backed up to a different device.

[TrigrH]

I use paragon hard disk manager to "clone" my raid 0

[jthorpein]

3 hours ago, TrigrH said:

I use paragon hard disk manager to "clone" my raid 0

Will this recover/recreate the RAID array info?? The RAID was deleted by accident, so now the system doesn't know where the OS is.

[TrigrH]

4 minutes ago, jthorpein said:

Will this recover/recreate the RAID array info?? The RAID was deleted by accident, so now the system doesn't know where the OS is.

if you are missing raid array info, you need to just set the raid up again with the same settings (on the raid controller), nothing should be lost.

[jthorpein]

2 hours ago, TrigrH said:

if you are missing raid array info, you need to just set the raid up again with the same settings (on the raid controller), nothing should be lost.

That's a problem I'm not sure what info should be there. I used the "Vaio Restore" disks when I put the bare drives in there and it created the RAID array, the name, bit size, etc.

 

Will formatting the new drives to be a blank drive and then using the "Vaio Restore" disks on these drives create the same RAID info that I need for the original set??

[TrigrH]

10 minutes ago, jthorpein said:

That's a problem I'm not sure what info should be there. I used the "Vaio Restore" disks when I put the bare drives in there and it created the RAID array, the name, bit size, etc.

 

Will formatting the new drives to be a blank drive and then using the "Vaio Restore" disks on these drives create the same RAID info that I need for the original set??

if you format, your data is lost.

 

All i know is on the intel raid controller you can rebuild the raid without formatting if the raid is broken from a non disk failure.

[jthorpein]

32 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

if you format, your data is lost.

 

All i know is on the intel raid controller you can rebuild the raid without formatting if the raid is broken from a non disk failure.

I'm not talking about formatting the original drives, but use the 2 new ones I got to replace the original drives to load Windows from the restore disks like I did with the original drives. Using the new drives to format and load windows like before, I was wanting to know if that should give me the same RAID parameters that I then can apply to the original drives.

[jthorpein]

37 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

if you format, your data is lost.

 

All i know is on the intel raid controller you can rebuild the raid without formatting if the raid is broken from a non disk failure.

For example,

 

Take the two original drives, set them aside and leave untouched.

 

Take the two new drives I got to replace the original drives, format them (as I tried using the clone feature on a drive dock), and then load Windows from the restore disks. After loading Windows, boot and go into the RAID console and note the RAID parameters. Then shut down.

 

Then removing the 2 new drives and put in the original drives then boot into the RAID console and input the same parameters I got earlier.

[TrigrH]

You can boot the old array clone it to a single 2tb drive and boot from that. I know that would work.

[jthorpein]

2 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

You can boot the old array clone it to a single 2tb drive and boot from that. I know that would work.

How would I do that?? It's not even booting into Windows now with the 2 drives? How would I take the 2 drives and combine them into 1 drive then be able to boot from it?

[TrigrH]

5 minutes ago, jthorpein said:

It's not even booting into Windows now with the 2 drives? 

You never said that, yeah I have no clue sorry.

[jthorpein]

47 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

You never said that, yeah I have no clue sorry.

I thought that was the understanding when I said "put them back into a RAID and boot from them" that I was unable to get Windows to boot.