HELP-RAID, Acronis, Repl 2 HDD's

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by QuiGonJohn, Feb 23, 2007.

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  1. QuiGonJohn

    QuiGonJohn Registered Member

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    I have to help a friend at his work to replace (2) 40GB HDD's which are configured w/RAID 1 (mirroring) in an HP Proliant ML330.

    What is the easiest way to do this? Can I use Acronis? Also, each of the 40GB drives are currently partitioned with a small C drive, about 8GB, and the rest D: drive. When done, not only do I want to have replaced the (2) 40GB's with the (2) new 200GB's, but also increase the size of the C partition.

    Here is what I thought might work. Please fill me in as to steps that will not work, and what I should do instead.

    1. Make full hard drive image using Acronis.

    2. Repl the drives and configure the new RAID 1 Array.

    3. Boot to Acronis Recovery CD and restore the full drive image to the new HDD. (Which due to RAID should appear as (1) 200GB HDD-in fact 2 but mirrored).

    4. Now I would probably have the image restored, but I'm guessing the C Partition will still be small. I was hoping at this point I could use Disk Management to reconfigure the partition sizes. Yes or no? Or would the new partition sizes both be bigger, keeping the same relative ratio, approximately 20% to 80%.

    I will greatly appreciate any help. I am concerned if Acronis will be able to see the array when I boot to the Acronis Emergency Recovery CD and also regarding changing the partition sizes.
     
    Last edited: Feb 26, 2007
  2. QuiGonJohn

    QuiGonJohn Registered Member

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    Can anyone help me with this?

    Thanks!
     
  3. GottaRegisterDang

    GottaRegisterDang Registered Member

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    Hi

    Generally what you've described is what I'd do.

    Do you have a Acronis True image boot CD already?. The reason I ask, is that I've had issues with mixing the Trial and purchased versions of true image within windows (and issues with True image and maybe PC Cillin anti virus software).

    I've become a little cautious about installing true image within windows, without 1st making an image of the machine (IE, boot the CD, image the machine to a external USB drive or network drive 1st before installing true image)

    If I can't make a image of the machine using the boot CD, then I get a bit nervous with installing true image into windows (The fact that if things don't work, the true image uninstall process is less than perfect is one such reason for my concerns.)

    Once you've made a image of the current mirrored raid set (using the Acronis Boot CD), then I'd remove the original raid set, and keep it in a safe place

    The fact that you can make image of the raid set; most likely means that you can also write the image back to a new raid set (the only thing that would of changed is the drives used in the mirrored raid set).

    I'd then install the new raid set, boot the Acronis Boot CD, and restore the image made to the new raid set. You can change the sizes of how the partitions are restored; but I don't exactly remember it off the top of my head

    Hope this helps
     
  4. QuiGonJohn

    QuiGonJohn Registered Member

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    OK, so I have ATI9, full purchased version, latest build. I do have an Emergency Recovery ATI CD I made. So you think, boot to the recovery CD, burn the full, less than 40GB image. Then swap the drives, create the new RAID Array in BIOS, then boot to the recovery CD and I should be able to restore that image onto the new drives?
     
  5. GottaRegisterDang

    GottaRegisterDang Registered Member

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    Hi

    I wouldn't burn it to DVD within Acronis. I haven't personally tried the DVD burning process within Acronis; but I'd expect it to be slower than a backup to another drive and I don't know how trust worthy the DVD backups would be (if The DVD backup works like Universal restore, then its most likely spotty at best)

    Just back it up to a external USB drive and verify it.. I usually set the backup split size to 435 meg (which If I remember correctly, will fit 10 parts per DVD-5) which I then use nero with Verify if I want to keep an archival hard copy.

    Additionally, U may even want to backup all the data with another backup program (NTBackup the machine to another drive)

    Never hurts to have lots of backups

    Then note the original drive positions as connected up to the raid controller, the raid bios settings if any, then carefully remove the drive set and store safely away

    Then Install the new Drives, Configure the raid set

    Boot the true image boot disk and restore back from the USB to the newly created raid set where you should be able to adjust partition size during the restore setup to suit your needs

    From what I've seen with Acronis, if you can read from the raid'ed drives correctly, then you can usually write to them to

    Just make sure you have enough backups (using different tools) to keep the stress level down, and protect the original raided drive set

    You may even want to post the raid controller type and bios level in the forum to see if anyone else has had success

    Good luck
     
  6. QuiGonJohn

    QuiGonJohn Registered Member

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    Sorry I confused the issue by using the word 'burn'. I really meant to an Ext USB HDD. That is all I ever usually do.

    Unfortunately, I can't post details about the Raid Controller, until I am going to the site to do the work. The only info I have is the server is an HP Proliant ML330 and the RAID is RAID 1.
     
  7. GottaRegisterDang

    GottaRegisterDang Registered Member

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    An update for you

    I mentioned that you can change the size of the partitions during full image restore.

    I've actually just done this to trouble shoot a machine (restored the drive to another machine with the exactly same hardware)

    It didn't prompt for partition resizing. It looks like the Full image restore doesn't allow you to re-size the partitions... maybe the recorded source drive needs to be of a different size than the destination... maybe TI will automaticly resize based on the percentage of of each partition when compared the overall drive size.

    I'm just not 100% sure. I'm guessing you're going to have to do some playing

    I know you can do partition resizing (I've definately done it in the past); but I think that its only when you're restoring individual partitions from a full image. IE.. Don't restore every paritition (by unchecking the drive an selecting individual partitions, and then there's a option hidden in one of the next steps to resize it).

    Now that I think on it, I do remeber thinking that it wasn't the best partitioning solution. Ghost 5 had a much clearer process for resizing


    Sorry about that

    Paul
     
  8. QuiGonJohn

    QuiGonJohn Registered Member

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    Did this and it worked.

    Booted to the Acronis Recovery CD, then backed up the C Drive Partition and then the D Drive Partition separately.

    Swapped the HDD"s, created the new RAID 1 (Mirroring).

    Booted back to the AcronisRecovery CD, restored first the C Drive Partition, onto the unpartioned space. At this point it let me choose the partition size, I chose 50GB of the 200GB. After that was done, I restored the D Drive Partition. Again it let me choose the partiton size, this time I took the max of the unpartioned space which was left. This is their data partition.

    Their C Partiton has 50GB, with only 7GB in use, plenty of expansion room and their D Partition has 138GB with only 8GB in use, so plenty left there as well.

    Thing is, prior to this I spent a bunch of time D/L & burn to CD various copies of Partition Magic and the HP RAID drivers, didn't even need them. Of course, Murphy's Law, if I hadn't D/L them, I'd have needed them.

    Thanks for the help.
     
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