Imaging to a Raid 0 Setup

[RostaFarian]

I have a 150 raptor and with a 1tb usb external harddrive. I will be getting 2 velociraptors for raid 0. What would be the best way to image my current harddrive for the new raptors (After searching the forum I am thinking of Acronis. Anyone try DriveImage XM?). Will I be sacrificing any performance by dumping an image or should I just do a fresh install. Could I dump the image from the usb External Harddrive? Thanks for any input on this.

[nitrobass24]

Ive imaged to raid a few times and it works well IF you install the raid drivers before you make the image.

[DonDon]

How old is your current install.

I personally like to do a fresh install of Windows when I make major system changes. Over time, as you install and delete programs and just generally use your system, the Registry fills up with keys that may not be needed anymore. This conspires over time to make even fast systems appear to slow down. It's not as bad a problem as it used to be, ( I used to do a fresh install of XP every 6 months to keep it fast enough,) but it still happens.

Now, a truly [H] person would do a fresh install, install a couple of the programs you use regularly, do a little informal benchmarking, then wipe the install and image your current install and repeat the benchmarking you did on the fresh install. Then of course you would report back here with the results! ;)

Don

[RostaFarian]

I'm such an idiot. The machine I wanted to put these in is a Vostro 400 which can only do raid 1. Apparently there is a bios flash that might make raid 0 possible over at thelostbrain.com but this seems risky. I don't even have a floppy on that machine. Anyone have any advice?

[Danny Bui]

Well if you're truly adventurous and really really want RAID0, do the BIOs flash. If the BIOs flash goes wrong, now you have an excuse to get a new motherboard :D

If you want your hardware to be relatively safe, don't bother with the flashing and stick with a single Raptor.

[nitrobass24]

well instead of Flashing your board you could buy a raid card

You dont need a expensive hardware IOP card for RAID0
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115029

[RostaFarian]

Thanks for the suggestions. For now I think i will put the drives in my backup machine. I've never experienced raid 0 so I’m kind of excited about this. If anyone has had success in flashing a vostro 400 installed with the 1010 Bios I would like to hear about it.

[dbwillis]

I had no problems flashing by Vostro to the latest bios.

Why bother with Raid0 and 2 vraptors?

[gersson]

If you are using Vista you can create an image to another HDD and then restore it to the RAID array.
You have to install the drivers for the device first, though. It was a little tricky...there are ~3 places where the vista install DVD allows you to add drivers and I did so on all 3 parts.
One thing you can do is add the drivers to the driver pool before you make the image. Here's an article that mentions this:

http://winserverteam.org.uk/blogs/scotty/archive/2007/08/12/server-core-and-drivers.aspx

I did this too just in case.

Basically what I am saying is yes, it can be done though I took so many precautions that I'm not sure which worked and which were extraneous. I went from 1 VRaptor to VRaptor RAID0 on another HBA (Intel -> Areca).

[RostaFarian]

The bios update I was referring to is specifically to enable raid 0 and can be found at thelostbrain.com (this is not the dell bios update).