Disk Clone w/CD to HPT372 RAID corrupts array?

Hello all,

I am not sure I am doing things correctly. I may be missing something critical, but it seems to me my problem is certainly not intended behavior.

I just bought two WD 160GB PATA drives. I took my old drive out of the case and popped it into a USB2.0 enclosure that works perfectly (have used it for months). I thought I would set up a RAID 0 array of 320GB, and then use TI's standalone/bootCD mode to "disk clone" my old drive (via USB2.0) to the RAID array.

Well, I am certainly able to do this. I always select manual mode and resize the partitions as I like, and proceed with the clone which takes 45 minutes or so.

Problem is, after I reboot, my HPT372 BIOS, when scanning for devices, suddenly comes up and says the RAID array is critical and the RAID 0 is broken -- it starts to not recognize the Primary Master (secondary shows up fine).

I thought maybe the drive was busted, so I deleted the array, recreated it (64k block size), used TI's CD again, and cloned again. Again after 45 minutes, TI tells me the disk clone was successful, but on reboot the BIOS once again claims the array is broken.

I am thinking maybe this is some bizarre conflict, and TI 9.41 doesn't like the HPT372 BIOS I am using (v 2.32) or something. Or maybe Disk Clone under standalone mode is buggy.

I probably should be reinstalling windows anyway. But I just wanted to try a system partition (at least) transplant and since I don't have any leftover space to make disk images from the old drive (the new drives have tobe clean to be able to clone to them), I have to use disk clone instead of restore.

I am worried that maybe TI 9.41 really doesn't work with my onboard RAID. It's an Abit BD7II-RAID with HPT372 controller, BIOS v2.32 for the HPT. The thing is, it can SEE the array just fine, and work with the partitions on it, and it seems to write fine, but after writing it is horribly screwing up or confusing the HPT BIOS chip.

Any suggestions? If this is a known problem I can try Ghost to see if it's any better, but I have really liked TI so far.

 

I'm surprised this hasn't received any comments at all.

Just wanted to post an update. I tried creating partitions on the newly created RAID 0 array, in partition magic 8.0. True Image sees them, but says they are of unknown type (0x07, NTFS/HPFS). However I am able to create an image from one of my external drive's partitions, to the logical partition of my new array. Then I was able to restore that image to the primary/active partition of my raid array.

That route worked fine. But why is the full disk clone, on the other hand, causing my highpoint BIOS to reject the array on bootup? Weird problem.

 

Seems this issue spans more than just 1 model of Highpoint controllers. I've experienced exactly the same behavior with a brand new HighPoint RocketRaid 1520 SATA controller and 2 sata drives in a Raid 0 configuration. I wasted a day and a half trying different cloning options to no avail. I finally went back to PowerQuest Drive Image ( one of the older releases, ver 6 I think ). It was slower during the copy but it worked, the raid 0 was intact and bootable afterwards. So for the time being my backup plans are to create TI images and if I ever have to use them, restore to a single PATA drive and then clone with DriveImage ... kinda lame but at least I can continue to use TI for backups.

 

Hello raddygast and jmasles,

Thank you for choosing Acronis System Transfer and Disk Clone Software.

The problem is that the system on your IDE drive doesn't content any RAID drivers. All the data was transferred succefully but when you are trying to boot Windows it cannot work properly with your RAID array. That is why problems with the array arise.

Also probably, there is a problem with the RAID itself. You may check it installing Windows on your RAID array.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

I have an ABIT TH7II-Raid witch uses the same Highpoint on-board controller.
TI-8 works perfectly in combination with my Raid-0 configuration.

I’m running WinXP Pro using the latest Highpoint drivers (2.351)