Take Raid0 images across to Raid1?

Hi all,

Since build 774 TrueImage has been working great on my Si3112a Raid0

One of my 2 drives (in raid0) is starting to fail so I have got a complete image of my Raid0 on my spare hard drive....

Has anyone tried or can assist on whether the following will work please...?

Install 2 shiny new 300gb Maxtor DiamondMax10 SATA drives and configure them as RAID1 (not raid0 this time).

Boot from Acronis CD and restore my previous Raid0 C+D+E partitions to the new RAID1 drives

Is this likely to work anyone please?

Many thanks!

Fedorov.

 

Yes, this will likely work. I use the server version and I have successfully restored images taken on RAID5 servers onto RAID1 servers and vice versa. In my case, the RAID levels are set and managed at the hardware level. I am not sure how successful this would be if the OS manages the RAID (software RAID). Good luck!

 

On board hardware for me so hopefully will be okay - I'm unsure here... with Raid1 should TrueImage show me ONE drive to restore to or will it show BOTH drives to choose to restore to because they are mirrored rather than striped?

Never used Raid1 before so just playing catch up... appreciate the advice.

Fedorov.

 

Before I wreck my own PC I've just tried on a test machine I have spare - I notice on Acronis CD bootup build 826 tells me "Medley Raid..... sorry only supports Raid0"!!!

Oh well, so I told it to restore my previous Raid0 "disk" to Disk1 of the 2 unallocated Disks it listed and Windows booted after restore!!!
I changed the network name, and IP address, did a restart and now get a BSOD (Unable to Boot... failure)

So my confusion is as per my previous post.... with my Raid1 configured in hardware bios, should TrueImage be showing the Raid1 as 1 or 2 disks... unsure

Thanks

Fedorov.

 

1 disk for successful use, 2 disks for failure.

 

Hehe interesting... I chose "Disk 1" of the 2 disks it listed, restored and machine seems to be working fine, booting up etc...

 

Hello Fedorov999,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Acronis True Image (build 826) should work with Sil3112 RAID controller. Did I get you right that when you booted with Acronis Bootable CD you saw two separate drives instead of a single one (that should be in RAID mode)? If so please make sure you have created Acronis Bootable CD with the build 826 and not with the earlier one.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Yes I was testing it on a Si3114? chipset board (Asus K8NE-Deluxe).
I hope when I try it on my own Si3112 that it sees the Raid1 as ONE drive

Can anyone please explain that although it showed me BOTH drives and I chose Drive1 to restore to, how come it works Machine boots up fine and appears to be running okay.

Thanks, Fedorov.

 

Hello Fedorov,

I am really sorry for the incorrect information in my previous post. I have contacted our Development Team in connection with your question and they said that Acronis True Image will definitely work with RAID 0 and may not work properly with RAID 1.

As for the reason why the system booted after restore to a single drive, this happened because all the data (including your operating system) were transferred to the disk. Seems that you have disabled RAID in BIOS after the restore and booted from the single drive, is this assumtion correct?

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Nope, I configured the 2 160gb drives as Raid 1 BEFORE restoring the image, and the Raid 1 is still there AFTER the image has been restored to Disk1. Is it not simply a case that as TI is restoring to Disk1 that the Raid 1 mirroring is automatically duplicating to disk2 hence why it all just works

Thanks

Fedorov.

 

Hi Federov,

After successfully restoring your image to the single drive, would your RAID1 (mirror) controller not have automatically rebuilt the RAID array to the other, in this case, serviceable drive? After all, that's the whole point of a RAID 1 array (recovery from a single hard drive failure) .

Regards

 

That's what I was thinking, there's no easy way to tell though unless I remove the Raid1 set and disable the 1st drive though

Also, while I understand Raid0 and Raid1 and their differences, are there any good articles anywhere that explain the more advanced stuff... e.g. Drive1 gets some bad sectors on it right in the middle of a 1gb file I have on there, what actually happens when you try to read that file, does it realize there are bad sectors at that point in that file and solely read it from Drive2 instead..... sorry to go slightly off-topic, worth asking though

Fedorov.

 

Phew! where to start? I've just searched google.com for "RAID 1" and came up with 427,000 English language hits. However, you might be interested in this article <RAID - Not such a clever idea for your home PC>.

As for reading corrupt data? In simple terms, each disk write operation will include check bytes. If those bytes don't match during data retrieval then the RAID controller will assume that particular drive in the array has failed and ignore the data being received from it.

Regards

 

Thanks! Interesting article.. I've now spent 3 days with problems, I've now replaced all 3 drives in my system with new ones as they all had various issues.

I've ditched RAID completely - thinking Raid1 would be a better solution to Raid0 but TI can't restore to Raid1 and the Raid bios couldn't even copy drive 1 to drive 2 to create the mirrored set... tons more issues, in the end I'm using my 1st new 300gb SATA DiamondMax10 drive for my Winxp/Games/Apps, 2nd 300gb SATA for Windows temp files, pagefile etc... and my new 160gb IDE solely for TrueImage backups.

Working fast and smooth AT LAST!!!

Thanks for all the advice and forget Raid!

Fedorov.

 

Very useful article.

I have a friend with a RAID 0 array that has been the source of massive problems and data loss. On two occasions it has appeared that a drive has failed resulting in loss of all data. This is in less than a year of service. I'm now suspicious that the RAID array may have failed and not the drives, but the data was still lost.

RAID 0 was chosen to create a very large, 500GB, and theoretically very fast drive for video editing. With all the problems, it now seems that a single SATA 300GB drive for video files would have been much smarter. A second 60-120GB SATA drive for the operating system and programs would have been faster than having everything in one partition on the RAID 0 array.

Although RAID 1 would seem a good idea, I think external image backups offer much greater security than RAID 1 since she also likes games and other software that may corrupt the array.

Thanks again.

 

It's cheaper and FAR less stress to just use TrueImage onto a spare drive than suffer what I've just done the last 3 days - I'm what I'd consider a pretty advanced PC user and I'd hate to see other's messing with Raid not realising just how much hassle it is when a drive does start to go wrong.

Fedorov.

 

Hi Federov and John,

Glad you both found the article interesting reading.

My system box contains two RAID controllers - SiI3112A (SATA) and ITE 8212F (IDE). There were early problems with the SiI RAID mode (data corruption) and the ITE chip continues to have piss poor performance. As can be seen from my Sig below, I use neither chipset in RAID mode (in fact I don't use the ITE controller at all now). I wonder why that is?!!

Regards

 

I been thinking of ditching my raid 0 setup at home as its giving me more hassle than its worth.

So I take it you were succesfull in restoring your raid 0 array to a non raid drive ok? If thats the case I think I will do that at home ASAP.

I have to agree with the statement that raid isn't really beneficial for home use and raid0 isn't that much faster than a single SATA drive any way. The risk to lose all your data is also higher as you only need on drive to fail to wreck everything.

Raid 1 is great for servers that has hot swappable drives, it show one drive faulty remove it and insert replacement drive and voila done! No reboots or user dissruption what so ever.

 

Yes, it was successful (thank goodness!) - using a Maxtor Diamondmax10 300gb for my 3 partitions (winxp, games, apps) and the 2nd Maxtor 300gb for pagefile/windows temp files etc...

Can't see any slowdown and it is so much less hassle!

Fedorov.