ShadowProtect HIR, hw RAID1 to no RAID

[axial]

Using ShadowProtect 3.2, installed, on WinXP SP2.

I need to do an HIR on my system in order to remove a RAID card (3ware 9650LP, configured as RAID1 with two Seagate 750mb drives partitioned into 4 drives, apps and windows all on C, data only on other drives) and migrate to a single Samsung Spinpoint (or similar) 1tb SATA, directly connected to the mobo, no RAID.

As a safety measure I want to keep the RAID card and 2 drives "intact", so that if anything goes wrong with the HIR I can remove the new drive, reverse the BIOS changes, and put them back in the system.

Am I correct that the steps in sequence should be as follows? am I missing anything?

1. full backup, verified, poked at to explore from R.E. CD boot
2. remove RAID card. attach new drive to mobo.
3. In BIOS, make changes as necessary for new drive.
4. continue to boot into Recovery Environment
5. do restore

What Restore options should be used.. my uncertain choice in []

Partition Active [yes]
Restore MBR [no]
Restore disk signature [no ??]
Restore hidden track [no]


I have 2 DVD drives, so I can get anything needed for the new drive from its CD.

6. Probably have to reactivate WinXP.

Any comments very, very welcome.

[Hairy Coo]

Would be inclined to install the new Samsung drive- unplugged.

Then do a SP backup.

Then disconnect-unplug the two RAID drives,so they dont interfere with the new starting sequence but you can leave in place temporarily.

Plug in the new drive,restart the computer with the SP RE disk in place,

Go into the BIOS ,which shows before the CD Drive starts up

Deactivate RAID and enable either AHCI or IDE mode- exit BIOS and allow SP RE to start in legacy mode.

Go to Disk Map,format and make the new Drive active.

Then choose Restore HIR and hopefully there will be no problems- Windows will boot using the new disk.

Then remove the RAID card and the two old RAID drives.

With HIR,you will find the new install will be missing some drivers,usually MS ones which Windows will find automatically.
However in my case-I also needed to reinstall the nVidia graphics card driver,so keep some drivers handy if possible

{QUOTE-> What Restore options should be used.. my uncertain choice in []
Partition Active [yes]
Restore MBR [no]
Restore disk signature [no ??]
Restore hidden track [no] <-QUOTE}

Yes -from within the legacy mode-go to SP Disk MaP as mentioned

This is important,otherwise you will never achieve a boot

All the others I would allow a restore as per the original.
Even though its a new drive-you do want the system to be identical to the old.

Then once booted-go to Admin Tools-Computer Management-DiskManagement-name and/or initialise the new drive.

EDIT-Just noticed a possible problem.

HIR will only restore to a similar sized or LARGER partition than the original,not smaller.

In your case-the old drive size under RAID was 1.5 TB whilst your new drive is only 1.tTB

However you have four partitions-so hopefully the systems C drive is less than 1TB.-you hint at 750mb.

Then you could restore.

Backup and restore the others seperately of course.

[axial]

Thank you, Hairy Coo, your answer is comprehensive and reassuring.

My current drives are two 750gb in a RAID1 (mirrored) setup, so unless I'm completely mistaken I do only have 750gb as far as total size, not 1.5gb, and each of the drive letters accounts for a portion of that 750.

Kevin at StorageCraft kindly answered a tech support call yesterday afternoon and told me that I could answer OK to all of the options without any problem. And given that I have several backups available, even if for some reason one is bad or even if the restore goes kablooie I still have the luxury of the whole weekend to do it over and over to get it right 8)

About your comment about the extra drivers, that's definitely an advantage I have here with only changing one item (the drives) rather than having multiple moving parts in this migration -- quite a luxury for most hardware changes ;D .

[Hairy Coo]

Looks like you are set to go-and good luck!

[axial]

Good news, the migration using ShadowProtect worked flawlessly and once I'd gotten all the settings correct, it was incredibly fast.

For anybody else following, comments:

I ended up restoring from an external USB drive rather than my eSATA, as the SATA drivers issue just took too much effort to deal with at the time. Now I realize the reason the huge preponderance of backup plans specifying USB isn't just because of more availability. < whap to the forehead! >



In the step

{QUOTE-> Go to Disk Map,format and make the new Drive active. <-QUOTE}

I noticed that ShadowProtect assigned drive letter "C" to the USB external drive, and had I continued on with the restore I was extremely concerned that I'd end up with my system being drive "D". Having gone through the agonies of changing drive letters during a WinXP reinstall a few months ago, I decided that was too risky, so I exited the R.E., unplugged the USB, rebooted into R.E., did the partition and format, got drive letter "C" assigned, and then exited R.E. one more time, plugged in USB, and this time it was assigned as D.


As it turned out, I couldn't use the settings recommended -- while the restore seemed to work, it wouldn't boot. So I restored once more, using:


Partition Active [yes]
Restore MBR [no]
Restore disk signature [no]
Restore hidden track [no]


Thank you to Hairy Coo for your invaluable assistance, and to all the regulars on the forum who so generously share their time and expertise.

[Hairy Coo]

Well done-Axial-not an easy job at all :thumb: :thumb:

{QUOTE-> I noticed that ShadowProtect assigned drive letter "C" to the USB external drive, and had I continued on with the restore I was extremely concerned that I'd end up with my system being drive "D". <-QUOTE}

The main thing is that you sorted it out,but in my experience,I find that Windows will sort out the boot drive and assign the letter C .

The external drive of course was used to backup and restore the SP image.

{QUOTE-> As it turned out, I couldn't use the settings recommended -- while the restore seemed to work, it wouldn't boot. <-QUOTE}

This is actually more logical.

In view of your experience,why dont you post your result in the StorageCraft Forum.

Anyway-a good result-give us your speeds etc for the new drive- would be interesting, in Hardware.