Cannot boot from RAID 1

Hi, I am new to this forum and Acronis True Image also.

My problem is this:
I have successfully cloned a WindowsXP drive onto a RAID 1 external SATA box. I have adjusted the bios to use the RAID as the 1st bootable disk, with the original internal disk as #2 bootable. However, when I restart, the 2nd disk always boots. If I disconnect the internal disk, then the system will not boot at all.

I did not change any drive letters on the disks (e.g. C: is still the internal drive, while E: is the external RAID). Does that make any difference?

Has anyone run into anything like this? I have the feeling it is something simple.

Thanks,
Mike

 

I think you have some sort of bios configuration problem. Even if your external drive has the drive letter of E: ( which will not result in a full bootup) you would get a "no boot hard drive found" or something similar warning when you disconnected your internal hard drive and tried to boot from the external drive.

You need to find out, how the boot.ini configuration is layedout with your external drive in play. Right now if you haven't edited the boot.ini file on the external drive it is probably still pointing to boot from the internal hard drive first.

It might come out to be that you just have to edit the boot.ini file to get it fixed.

As far as the drive letters, if your reading it from the internal hard drive that might not be accurate (to get an accurate reading you have to read it from the external hard drive registry. For right now I would go that it's still c: until you fix the other problems first.

Once you do get the external drive to start the boot up process if it hangs /loops just before the logon screen than you do have a drive letter change problem. With windows xp the drive letter needs to be exactly what it was on the source hard drive that you cloned. In your case it needs to be c:

 

Thanks for your reply. I believe you're onto something here. Let me clarify further what happens.

I still have the internal drive installed and cabled. The BIOS has been altered to make it the 2nd bootable drive after the RAID drive. The RAID is a clone of the bootable drive. When I try to boot after uncabling the internal drive, the RAID is skipped over and it tries to boot of the network (the last resort). Of course, it can't do that and just hangs.

I have tried a couple of things with the boot.ini on the RAID.
1) just leave it as it is (won't boot)
2) change the 'multi' parameter to 'scsi' (won't boot)
3) change the scsi value from 0 to 1 (won't boot)

Here is a copy of the original boot.ini if that helps in understanding the situation:


timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I don't know many other options that I can try with the boot.ini. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Mike

 

My guess is that you let Windows see the RAID array while the internal drive was still connected. Windows hates two identical drives, so it makes the new one unbootable. (It sees the RAID array as a single drive. After all you cloned it from the single internal drive.)

Try this.
1. Disconnect the RAID array and boot from the internal drive to confirm that you can boot normally with that drive.

2. Shut down.

3. Attach the RAID array.

4. Now, boot from the Acronis TI Recovery CD.

5. Repeat the cloning of the internal drive to the RAID array.

6. This is essential! Shut down and DISCONNECT the internal drive before trying to boot into Windows.

7. Boot and set the BIOS to see the RAID array as the boot drive and proceed with booting into Windows.

You can boot from the internal drive if you disconnect the RAID array, but if you boot from the RAID drives and let Windows see the internal drive, it won't be bootable any more.

 

John,

Thanks for the clear instructions. It might be a day or two before I can try this as I need to work on the machine during the day. However, I will try very soon and post the results back to the forum.

Thanks for the help.
-Mike

 

What? Work on the machine? That's where the problem is. If you just back it up and never work on it, you wan't have any problems.

Seriously, we'll look forward to hearing how things go when you have the time.

 

After cloning, did you disconnect the origianl disk before rebooting? If not, then it's likely Windows is confused about which disk is really the system/boot disk. Sometimes in this situation, it even divides some of the "system" between the two disks.

 

I like the idea of not needing to backup, however that does not seem very practical at this time

I ran into a problem with the procedure - when booting from the CD, Acronis cannot see the RAID drive. So, that's a show-stopper already. I am wondering if it would work if I did the clone by booting from the OS and then follow the remaining steps afterwards? Or any idea of how to get Acronis boot Cd to see the RAID?

Thanks

 

What version of TI are you using and what build. Did you make a new Recovery CD to match the most recent update that you have installed.

SATA support is poor in TI 9, but TI 10 Build 4942 supports a lot of RAID systems. TI 11 is better.

You can try the cloning in Windows, but shut down and disconnect the old drive before rebooting into Windows after the clone.

 

I am using version 11. Yes, the recovery CD was made from version 11.

When I ran TI from the CD there was a message about the RAID displayed. However, it flashes by so quickly I cannot read it.

I will try the procedure from the OS and see what results it brings. I'll report back when I have some results.

Thanks,
Mike

 

I'm sorry to say that my efforts have not yielded the desired results :-(

I cloned the system disk onto the RAID with no problems, shut down the system immediately afterwards, disconnected the internal drives and rebooted. The external RAID was the first (and only) hard drive in the BIOS, however it would not boot.

Unless someone has some other ideas, I do not think it is do'able using the clone. I suspect I will have to install Windows Xp directly onto the RAID in order to boot from there.

Thanks for the suggestions, tho.

-Mike

 

Are there any error messages when you try to boot from the RAID disks?

Have you looked at the boot.ini file on the RAID disks to see if there is anything odd, such as pointing to the wrong drive letter or partition?

 

Hello Mike4749,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please clarify, is your original system drive IDE or SATA?

Thank you.
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Marat Setdikov