Procedure to Transfer Windows OS From a RAID Array to a SATA Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter RRTRACKS via WindowsKB.com
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RRTRACKS via WindowsKB.com

What I would like to do is move my Windows OS from the Raid 0 Array to a SATA
single drive. What I have encountered in attempting to do this is nothing but
problems. Thus here I am.

Currently I have two Raid 0 Arrays. The Windows OS is set up on a 25 GB
partition on the first partition. The thinking behind this was by putting the
OS on a small partition it would be easier to backup and restore. There are
two other partitions of about 10 GB each where my data is stored and one more
partition of approximately 420 GB where video and audio files are stored.

The second Array has a single partition of approximately 500 GB and is where
the program files and one of the sets of backup files for the data files are
located.

As you might have surmised, each of the two arrays has a pair of 250 GB
drives. Since I have been getting a number of bad clusters on the second
array I have decided to replace the two arrays with two single 500 GB SATA
drives. If at all possible I would like to transfer the OS, data and programs
to the new drives without having to reinstall and update everything. The
Windows installation disk I have has only SP1 on it. The number of updates to
Windows alone even using a DLS connection, the last time I did this, took me
almost an hour to do.

The Seagate drives I purchased came with a program called DiscWizard which
has partitioning, formatting and the capability of transferring the operating
system from the old system on to the new drive. Since I would prefer to keep
the roughly the same partitions, I used DiscWizard for the purpose of
partitioning and formatting the drives. Using Norton’s Ghost I copied each of
my old drives onto each of the respective partitions of the new drive
partitions. If you are familiar with Ghost you know that the copy process has
the ability to transfer the MBR (Master Boot Record) along with all the files
in a format compatible with what is required for a boot drive. Well almost.
It has not worked for me.

After setting up the new drives, removing the old drives, reconfiguring the
Bios, and restarting the system I got the normal Windows Splash Screen with
the black background. However, I did not get the second Splash Screen,
“Windows is Starting Upâ€, message with the blue screen. Instead I got the
same blue screen with the banner “Windows Home Edition†slightly below and to
the right of center. At that point Windows from what I could do and see
locked up. The only thing that would unlock it is the reset button or the
power switch.

Putting the old drives back in and reconfiguring the Bios to boot off my new
OS partition, gets Windows to the desktop and paints the icons there as valid
short cuts. This is more than I would have expected from a boot from Drive I.
But after doing that it consistently reports a svchost.exe error that
effectively stops anything else from getting done.

Thinking that after one half way successful boot from the new drive that
removing the arrays and doing another boot from it would work, only produced
the same result of the original effort.

My computer system at this point works fine. All I want to do is back it up
and restore it on two new drives. Before giving advice I would hope you would
have some understanding about why I have had the problems I have had to date.
Spending hours experimenting with other approaches without understanding what
has gone wrong so far seems rather pointless and not the approach I would
prefer to take at this time. Just as an after thought, I did remove the raid
controller card from my computer as part of the array removal process.

As far as other resources in dealing with this problem, I do have an external
250 GB drive and Partition Magic. On the surface this would seem to be a
simple problem. Given that Microsoft required a floppy disk to install the
drivers for my RAID card at the time I set my system up it may not be. If
this situation has not changed I would take that as a very bad sign as to
what it is I want to do. Hopefully I have made a big ado about nothing and
someone will have a workable suggestion for the problem presented here. If
you happen to be that person, let me thank you in advance for your assistance.
You will get a post thanks as well, this problem really has me stumped.

Rich
 
For now you can disregard the request for help in the previous post. It
appears the culprit of the problem I was experiencing was Norton Ghost 2006.
It may take me a couple of days to get everything sorted out as my time at
this point is rather limited. But for now I am on what appears to be the
right road. Once I get everything working and have a better handle of the
problem, a follow up post will be provided.

Rich
 
Having a bit of time, a little more information about the problem I have been
dealing with follows.

The next step from the first post placed here was to format a Western Digital
SATA drive as a boot drive using the WD software (Data Lifeguard). Upon
removing all the old drives a successful boot of Windows to the Desktop was
made, and some moving around without errors was possible.

Next I went back and used Seagate’s program to create a bootable drive with
one of the Seagate disc drives that is going to used to replace my old ones.
Removing the old drives and booting from this one was also successful.

With the hardware configuration I have it is now obvious Norton’s Ghost 2006
cannot make and restore a copy of the operating system in the manner I have
been attempting. Without a great deal of testing it is not possible to say
exactly what the problem is. However, in my opinion the most likely cause of
the problem I have been having is a result of Ghost’s inability to make a
bootable RAID 0 Array backup in a format that can be used by a SATA single
hard drive. It is also possible Ghost’s problem is in the backup process of a
making a bootable image from a RAID 0 array.

The lessons learned from all this, although probably obvious to most follow.

Setting up a RAID 0 array for home use is a very bad idea. The performance
gains are minimal and the risk of a hard drive failure is doubled. If you are
thinking about using it don’t. If you already have a system with a RAID 0
array I would not count upon Norton Ghost to make reliable backups of the
boot drive unless you see evidence presented by others indicating this is
possible.

Creating a small disk partition for the Windows boot drive is a good idea. In
my case it made the testing of the problem much easier as the backup and
restore methods were based upon the entire bootable partition. The
possibility of other problems to the boot partition files such as disc errors,
viruses or even user errors makes this approach that much more attractive.

If you do decide to create a small partition for Windows, make sure you place
your document and setting folder on another drive. One downside to doing this
is the default installation drive you have for every program you install will
be on the bootable drive. There is probably a fix for this.

As far as being a Windows expert, I am not. The comments and opinions
provided here are based upon practical experience and lack the depth someone
with the education and experience with these topics would have. I do not mind
people having a perspective different from mine pointing out errors I might
have made. In fact I welcome it. What could be worse than admitting you were
dumb enough to setup a RAID 0 array for a home system?

Rich
 
RRTRACKS said:
Having a bit of time, a little more information about the problem I
have been dealing with follows.

The next step from the first post placed here was to format a Western
Digital SATA drive as a boot drive using the WD software (Data
Lifeguard). Upon removing all the old drives a successful boot of
Windows to the Desktop was made, and some moving around without
errors was possible.

As far as being a Windows expert, I am not. The comments and opinions
provided here are based upon practical experience and lack the depth
someone with the education and experience with these topics would
have. I do not mind people having a perspective different from mine
pointing out errors I might have made. In fact I welcome it. What
could be worse than admitting you were dumb enough to setup a RAID 0
array for a home system?

Rich
Click to expand...

I have had a RAID 0 on my home systems for over three years. No
problems.
I have been sucessful with back up and restores using Drive Image 7
(old).
I however do not see much use in partitioning drives. I have backups of
my drives which makes partitioning useless for me.
 
Frank,

Thanks for the comments. I have also been successful making back up and
restores on my Raid 0 array drive using Norton’s Ghost to restore data back
to the original Raid 0 drive. Now that one of my drives is starting to report
bad clusters I would like to replace the two Raid 0 arrays I have with two
SATA drives. The problems I have had are described in great detail in the
previous posts presented here.

While doing no harm, I would agree with you that I went a little overboard
with the number of partitions on the drives I have. Creating a small
partition for the Windows boot drive has been useful for the testing I have
done in attempting to do the transfer of the operating system described.
Unfortunately, to date, none of this testing has done me a bit of good

Rich
 
As mentioned above I have been able to create a copy of my boot partition
that boots successfully with the utilities provided by Seagate and Western
Digital. Upon attempting to recreate the files on additional partitions I
have come up against the same problems with getting the computer to boot
described above. I have done this by copying files between the old and new
drives partitions with both Seagate’s and Norton’s programs.

A lesson learned here. While it may seem like a good idea to boot the
computer in Save Mode before doing a disk copy, do not do it unless you have
a lot of time.

At this point reinstalling Windows and all the data onto a different drive
system would only be a precautionary measure as my system does not crash, or
report reoccurring and/or frequent errors.

I would like to do further testing, by trail and error, as it does not appear
there is anyone that can provide any technical assistance to the problems
described.

The potential problem with doing this testing is the required activation of
the OS each time a different hard drive is used to boot. Is there a limit as
to the number of times you can switch the OS between a limited number of
drives with a given system configuration and still be able to activate
Windows?

Rich
 
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