TI 8.771 & SI x112 RAID

2 x 80GB drives on SATA and configured as RAID 0. Partitioned as NTFS:

C: SATA_RAID_BOOT_C (40GB)
D: SATA_RAID_D (40GB)
E: SATA_RAID_E (80GB)

1 X 80GB on IDE1 ( + DVD Reader/CD Writer slave) partitioned as:
F: IDE_IDE_F (40GB)
G: IDE_IDE_G (40GB)
Empty Rack on IDE0 ( & DVD Writer slave)

Image backups of c: SATA_RAID_BOOT_C are stored on the F: IDE_IDE_F ie. non RAID.

TI 7 has always managed to create an image from within windows xp into the IDE drive, BUT.......

I have not been able to restore the image from the TI recover CD. In fact, it trashed my RAID c: partition and I has to do a complicated restore by reinstalling windows + acronis TI, extracting all the imaged files to a drive, booting from a Bart PE CD, deleting all files from C: drive RAID and then copying the un-imaged files to the C: drive. It booted straight into Windows XP!

Now when TI 8 came out it could see my RAID drives. Now it is patched to 771 and Acronis claim in this group that it will recognise Silicon Image x112 systems. But how can I tell without stuffing up my system again?

A few Questions/Observations:

1. What do the coloured icons (flags) mean? Does red mean there is a problem? If so why does it not show up on my chkdsk progs or on other utilities?

2. In Windows XP sp2 TI 8.771 seems to recognise all my drives although some are flagged red. However in TI8 bootCD mode the names of my RAID partitions are not recognised and the file systems on C: D: are not recognised, yet E: is correctly identified! IDE are correctly identified. I do not expect the drive letters to match, but I would expect the patition names to be recognised. I think it recognises that IDE 0 does not have a drive attached and the 3 partitioned RAID are correctly grouped. The RAID drives have red crosses (from memory) and to me that spells danger! Could some post a description of how it should look to be safe(ish).

3. I have been fiddling with making a Bart PE disk that has drivers to recognise my SI x112 RAID (this successful) and also TI 8 that actually launches from a CD based Windows environment and therefore will see all the drives as TI does under windows xp. Is this worth the effort? Has someone succeeded?

4. I note that Norton Ghost 9 uses the PE Windows boot system and when the correct SATA SI x112 drivers are loaded it sees everything. It also has tools to defrag and virus check the drives. Other low level tools are also included. This is perhaps the better option to follow, although I can't help having a soft spot for the breakthrough and leading edge from Acronis.

 

more like 'bleeding' edge

 

To my (extensive) knowledge, no one has been able to get TI to run under WinPE (or Barts), although many (including some very advanced programmers and lots of hackers) have tried. Getting the raid drivers working is trivial. If you have the patience (I have to take a nap while it boots) to boot from the Norton Ghost 9 CD, go for it.