Repeated failure trying to restore to RAID array

I have been trying for 3 days to restore my system and I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions that might help me because I don't know what else to try.

I had a Windows 2000 SP4 system consisting of a RAID array of two 120GB IDE drives. I did a checkdisk and a defrag on this array which was my C: drive. I did a check disk on an external USB drive and then created a full backup of my drive C (the two disk RAID array) to the USB drive. I then validated the backup.

I then uninstalled the two old hard drives and installed two new Western Digital Caviar SE 320GB IDE drives. I turned the system on, went into setup and created a new RAID array from the two new hard drives, and marked the new array as a boot array.

I put the Acronis True Image 10 CD in and let the system boot into the Acronis software. I chose the restore option and during configuring that I first chose the C: partition and resized it to take advantage of the new larger disk size, then chose the MBR to also be restored. I then let it proceed.

Four hours later it told me the restore had been successfully completed. But when I let the system boot up the RAID controller told me that the secondary channel disk in the RAID array was not responding. Thinking I might have a bad drive, I opened the case and physically swapped the positions of drive 1 and 2. I then repeated the whole restore process and again after 4 hours it told me that the secondary channel was not responding. Since it told me the secondary channel again and not the first channel, this confirmed that it was not a physical disk problem.

I have tried it with the two new disks set to master and set to cable select. It takes 4 hours every time I try and I always get the same result that the second disk in the array is not responding. If I put my two old drives back in, it works fine so I do not believe it is a hardware problem with the RAID array. I am using a High Point RocketRaid 133 controller card.

I would be grateful for any help. Would restoring the whole disk at a time help instead of selecting the C partition first and resizing it?

I'm really at my wits end here. Thanks for any suggestions.

- Alan

 

Can anyone help me with this?

 

Things I'd check into:

- Does raid controller support the larger drive size?
- How big is the boot partition (I've seen w2k have issues with larger partition sizes)
- There's a W2k patch which fixes issues with larger harddrives (upgrades my bud's Compaq P4 w/ 40gig to a 250 gig drive). Had to install the patch prior to imaging the machine (as other wise the machine wouldn't boot) Don't remember the exact patch details; but I googled it.
- If you're setup with a Mirrored set, can you restore the image to a single non mirrored drive, and then upgrade the drive to a mirrored set?

Hope this helps

 

mailalan:

According to the HighPoint site the RocketRaid 133 supports array up to 2TB so the disk size shouldn't be an issue as far as the card is concerned.

Have you tried restoring the image without resizing the partition? Just check the "Disk 1" box and restore. This will give you the same layout/size you had on the old drives.

As GottaRegisterDang asked, how large is the boot partition? If Win2K does have a problem with too large a partition, then restoring to the old size (as above) might fix it. You could then install the patch and reimage/rerestore, or create another partition from the unallocated space.

Is it a RAID 0, 1, 0+1 or JBOD array?

 

It is a RAID 0 array. The Windows 2000 operating system is updated to service pack 4. When restoring I was resizing the C: partition to 500 gigs and I had a logical partition F: that I resized to 100 gigs.

I will try the disk at once method instead of selecting the individual partitions and resizing and report back. I'll also look into the boot partition patch and see if I need it.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Alan

 

Success! I was finally able to transfer my old RAID 0 array to new hard drives.

Here is what I did....my High Point RAID controller will support two RAID arrays. So I took my two new drives and created a second RAID array with them. I then used the clone operation in True Image rather than trying to restore a backup. I chose the manual clone operation and made sure I copied the existing RAID area "As Is". I did not let the clone operation resize the partition to take advantage of the extra space on the new drives. And that did it. Everything worked fine and it booted right up. I then used disk partitioning software to allocate the extra space on the new drives.

So if you have a RAID array and can create a second RAID array, I'd recommend cloning the existing disk using the "as is" option.

- Alan