single SATA to Raid 1

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migration from SATA drive to SATA RAID 1

I've just received my Dell Optiplex 755 with Vista Ultimate and 2x250 SATA
drives.
I asked Dell to configure the 2 disks as RAiD 1 but it turned up with the
two disks as separate SATA drives.

I want to migrate the already installed sytem to RAID 1.

So far, I used the Complete PC Backup to create a backup of disk C: (which
contains two partitions, the "system or c:" and the a recovery partition)
onto an external hard disk.

I configured the two disks as RAID 1 and then booted from the OS DVD, then
went into repair, followed by the "Complete PC Restore". The restore process
starts ok but after a moment it stops and tells him the system I am trying to
restore is bigger than the volume I have in my system.

I am really puzzled by it as the disk I backed up was 250GB and the RAID is
composed by 2x250GB.

Any solutions or ideas why this is happening?

Also, one more thing, I did try to "shrink" the initial volume to make it
smaller ( by 50GB!!!) and it made no difference whatsoever, it still tells me
my destinaltion smaller than the source.

Many thanks for your help
alex
 
Why RAID is (usually) a Terrible Idea
http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles?&id=29

RAID Explained
http://www.pugetsystems.com/articles.php?id=24


--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience -
Windows Vista Enthusiast

---------------------------------------------------------------

I've just received my Dell Optiplex 755 with Vista Ultimate and 2x250 SATA
drives.
I asked Dell to configure the 2 disks as RAiD 1 but it turned up with the
two disks as separate SATA drives.

I want to migrate the already installed sytem to RAID 1.

So far, I used the Complete PC Backup to create a backup of disk C: (which
contains two partitions, the "system or c:" and the a recovery partition)
onto an external hard disk.

I configured the two disks as RAID 1 and then booted from the OS DVD, then
went into repair, followed by the "Complete PC Restore". The restore process
starts ok but after a moment it stops and tells him the system I am trying to
restore is bigger than the volume I have in my system.

I am really puzzled by it as the disk I backed up was 250GB and the RAID is
composed by 2x250GB.

Any solutions or ideas why this is happening?

Also, one more thing, I did try to "shrink" the initial volume to make it
smaller ( by 50GB!!!) and it made no difference whatsoever, it still tells me
my destinaltion smaller than the source.

Many thanks for your help
alex
 
"migration from SATA drive to SATA RAID 1" <migration from SATA drive to
SATA RAID (e-mail address removed)> wrote in message
I've just received my Dell Optiplex 755 with Vista Ultimate and 2x250
SATA
drives.
I asked Dell to configure the 2 disks as RAiD 1 but it turned up with
the
two disks as separate SATA drives.

I want to migrate the already installed sytem to RAID 1.

So far, I used the Complete PC Backup to create a backup of disk C:
(which
contains two partitions, the "system or c:" and the a recovery
partition)
onto an external hard disk.

I configured the two disks as RAID 1 and then booted from the OS DVD,
then
went into repair, followed by the "Complete PC Restore". The restore
process
starts ok but after a moment it stops and tells him the system I am
trying to
restore is bigger than the volume I have in my system.

I am really puzzled by it as the disk I backed up was 250GB and the
RAID is
composed by 2x250GB.

Any solutions or ideas why this is happening?

Also, one more thing, I did try to "shrink" the initial volume to make
it
smaller ( by 50GB!!!) and it made no difference whatsoever, it still
tells me
my destinaltion smaller than the source.

Many thanks for your help
alex
Click to expand...

I don't know if this will help, but RAID 1 is Mirrored Drives, not a
Striped Array, so you only get 1x250GB of space since the second drive
is used as a mirror of the first drive.

Regards,

Dave
 
Thanks Dave, I think I didn't make it clear in my initial post. My system
came with 2x250GB hard disks, disk 1 has two partitions, a "system" and a
"recovery", the second hard disk has only one partition, called "data".

I removed the disk wth the "data" partition and then I did a Complete PC
Backup of only one disk, the one with the two partitions, "system" and
"recovery". So what I am trying to put back on a mirrored 2x250GB volume is
only one 250GB volume.

In my mind, restoring a 250GB single volume to 250GB RaID 1 volume should
work just fine, but it keeps telling me the destination is smaller than the
source. I did shrink the "source" by 50GB with the result my backup source
was well under 200GB and it still told me the source was too big for the
destination.

I found somewhere through Google an idea that Complete PC Backup can't do
cross restores, ie from single to raid, or raid to single. Is this true? I
find it a bit hard to believe.

So yes, the problem is still there and any help to figure out what's
happening is still very much appreciated.
 
thanks for the suggestion. I will try, I am a bit concerned with the fact
that to be able to format the drive, I need to initialize and create a
partition. I am not sure if restoring 2 partitions to an already partitioned
hard disk would work.

As far as I am aware, Vista installation could see physical volumes and deal
with them accordingly, like partitioning and formatting.

nevertheless, I am going to try your suggestion

Cheers
alex
 
Just to recap for anybody who would still like to help,
I have a Complete PC Backup of one 250GB SATA drive (two partitions,
"system" and "recovery") I have set up a RAID 1 volume of 2x250GB. When I try
to do a Complete PC Restore, I keep getting a message saying the destination
drive is too small.

"scrooge" suggested to format the RAID 1 volume first and then do the
Complete PC Restore. Well, I get the same result, destination too small! so
yes, I am still stuck!

Any ideas? Does anybody got a good link to how to migrate from single hard
disk to RAID 1? What I am trying to avoid is reinstalling the whole system
and in my naive opinion, Vista should be able to restore a system backup to
any type of volume, whether RAID or no RAID. So far, I can only restore to a
non-RAID.

Cheers
alex
 
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