TI 8.0(937) will restore image onto Raid 0 but upon reboot,1sec XP Screen > BSOD!

Abit IS7 Motherboard w/onboard ICH5 Raid 0/1
2x Hitachi SATA 80gb drives

I created a image off a single 250gb Maxtor drive about 22gb in size.

Stored it onto a USB External drive.

Restored with that image and that external drive onto 1 of the Hitachi 80gb's just to make sure the image would work. It boot up and worked just fine on 1 Sata drive.

Next I setup both Hitachi 80gb Sata into Raid 0 and tested to make sure the array was working by reinstalling XP Home onto it. It boot up just fine into windows.

Next I left the BIOS settings alone, boot into the TI 8.0 (937) boot disk, selected the same image, selected the raid 0 array that showed up about 150gb in size. Set it as active drive, and let it restore the image onto the raid array. Completed fine. Reboot the system with no BIOS changes, Raid 0 is still left as boot device like it did with the single drive install previously. Well it gets past BIOS/POST screen, then displays XP for about 1 sec then goes to Blue Screen,Hardware failure screen. All the info is on the drive when I look at the raid array through the boot disk, all the windows files are installed and using the correct ammount of space. Just won't boot.

Attempted formatting the Raid 0 with XP disc and then image,recreating the partion with the boot disk ultlity of TI8.0 and then imaging. 4x I tried and each time it comes back with BSOD.

So if I install windows on the array it loads up great using the supplied F6 /Floppy driver for Intel 865PE/ ICH5 Raid setup. But then without changing the settings in BIOS and leaving the array alone I then try to restore using the tested image that I used on just 1 of the drives and the restore completes and then reboot , windows Xp shows the start screen for a split sec then goes to blue screen.

IDEAS? Please. I already gave up trying to use this on my Nforce system, I reloaded the OS on it from the ground up which took about 6hrs total. With this system I can't afford to do a full restore and with all this wonderful software that is supposed to work with Raid 0 why should I do a clean install after spending $50 on this stuff. I just can't reload it, its too healthy of a install, not a single issue with the image , it runs fine on one drive but just not Raid.

I have ran the MBR repair floppy and the sysinfo.txt file that I sent into support.

 

Hello eno45,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please also do the following?

- Download the Acronis Report utility from http://www.acronis.com/files/support/AcronisReport.exe;
- Run Acronis Report utility and select the "Create bootable floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the floppy drive and proceed with creating the bootable diskette;
- Boot the computer under consideration from this diskette and wait for report creation process to complete;
- Send us the 'report.txt' file from the floppy disk.

Also please let me know your Acronis request # which was sent to you in autoreply to your letter to Acronis Support Team.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Acronis #388046

Just restored that same image onto another drive this time a IDE 120gb and it boot up fine. I will attempt to format the Raid 0 in windows and then clone the 120gb onto the Raid 0 array. Funny thing under Disk Management , the 111.79gb shows up, the 153.38gb Raid 0 shows up and one of the same Raid 0 drives shows up as well as single 76.69gbs.Weird?? It states unknown next to the single SATA drive. Do you think that means anything??


Hope this clone works.

EDIT, it just completed the format in windows kinda, only half the raid array formatted. It shows up under my computer as 153gb Total size, 76.6 Free Space. So one drive is not in the Raid Array. I did have to change the BIOS options after the first boot onto the test 120gb image, since the raid array didn't show up, I put it to enhanced mode which is supposed to allow Raid plus regular IDE drives. Its what I have done in the past when I had Raid 0 and a Storage IDE drive. So once I iron out the Raid settings for this side test I will format, and clone like I planed on.

 

Ok, I got it to work... but not easily. I wish I could restore the image from a boot disk. However like I have stated, it would complete the image on the Raid array but as soon as I would boot. BAM, Blue Screen.

So I opened up a new 120gb IDE drive and plugged it in, took my USB external drive that had the image and plugged it in and reimaged the 120gb IDE.
Next I boot into the OS, and tried various attempts to get the BIOS/OS to find the Raid drives. Sometimes it would find them but could not get them to show up proplerly in TI8.0 to clone them. So I went and double checked my friends system which he had the same setup, 120gb boot, dual raptors storage. He had the same settings. Raid enabled,IDE bus mastering off,Boot in device set for boot up, Raid Chip set as Boot in device. So I booted up into the 120gb IDE again with those Raid settings, still the Raid drive would not be found in windows. I then downloaded and installed the Intel Raid software (17mb) and it detected the drives finally and installed the drivers needed within the running OS software. So I then went into TI 8.0 in windowsxp and set it to clone the drive, well I crossed my fingers and really didn't expect much, and it completed fine, and held my breath as it cleared the boot screen onto the moment of truth.......

....... it boot into windows and is running fine!!!! I am defraging the system now. Sucks that I have to image twice, once onto a IDE drive, then clone from the IDE onto the Raid 0 array. Well it works at least and still saved me more time then totalling reloading the Media Center.

I still wish Support would try to help/fix the way to restore from image directly to a Raid 0 array. This is a pain to restore this way, means I have to tear into my living audio rack and install a drive into my PC room, image it, clone to raid, put everything back together and pray I don't have to do that again soon.

-eno

If people in the future can ever learn from this or need to ask me a question, I know the pains of imaging and raid and would be happy to help with what I can and know.