Windows Single Disk to RAID1 (For a Unix Guy)

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BecauseScience

[H]ard|Gawd
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I want to upgrade my Windows gaming PC from a single disk system to a raid1 using built-in Intel raid. What's the least painful way to do this?

#1 Do a fresh install of Windows onto the raid and copy files over

or

#2 Image the old drive onto the raid

If this was a Linux system I'd boot into a Linux usb stick, build the raid, and use filesystem clone tools to image everything over. I know how to do the same thing for Intel raid and ntfs. However, I suspect that Windows may not like being imaged onto a raid from a single drive system. Is the RST raid driver in there? Will Windows freak out for some other random reason?

I only use this PC for gaming and I don't game much so I want to expend as little time as possible making the switch.
 
I'm not sure RAID1 is really useful for such usage.

But you can go the clone route, if you first switch to RAID mode. How easy it is to do will depend on your hardware that you didn't describe.
 
Why do you want to do this? There is no performance or storage advantage with RAID1.
 
Aesma said:
I'm not sure RAID1 is really useful for such usage.

But you can go the clone route, if you first switch to RAID mode. How easy it is to do will depend on your hardware that you didn't describe.
Click to expand...

The hardware is a Z77 motherboard with Intel Matrix Raid aka "fake" raid.

So I can install my new disks, build the raid, image my old drive over and Windows won't throw fit?

thefordmccord said:
Why do you want to do this? There is no performance or storage advantage with RAID1.
Click to expand...

I'm doing it because I don't want to deal with disk failures. The disk on this machine went belly up a couple months ago. It was a huge pain the ass. I don't want to deal with that hassle again.

For the inevitable "raid is not a backup" comments: I don't want to invest the time needed to do real backups on this box. There is nothing of worth on it. This is purely a time saving measure.
 
TBH I'm not sure how windows or the Intel RAID system will react to this.

Just to avoid hassle I would just do a clean install.
 
1) use clonezilla or acronis to image your current disk to an external hard drive or network storage.
2) Install your new hard drive(s) and configure the RAID1 through the bios.
3) use clonezilla or acronis to take the image created earlier and write it to your raid array.
 
Aesma said:
Do you have another SATA controller on the MB ?
Click to expand...

I have a nice usb3 dock that I'm going to use. I'll install the new disks in the machine, pull the current disk, and stick it in the dock.

I don't need help with the mechanics of the operation or the actual imaging (if I go that route). The part I'm unsure about is whether or not Windows 7 will fail to work after it's imaged from a single disk to a raid. Windows is more finicky about some disk related things than Linux. For instance, Windows doesn't like it when you change from ide to ahci. You have to go into regedit and enable the ahci driver first. That's the kind of stuff I'm worried about.
 
Well I'm trying to answer that exact question but you avoid answering mine. If you have another SATA controller then you can put your windows drive on it, switch the intel to RAID, boot windows, and install the RAID drivers.
 
Aesma said:
Well I'm trying to answer that exact question but you avoid answering mine. If you have another SATA controller then you can put your windows drive on it, switch the intel to RAID, boot windows, and install the RAID drivers.
Click to expand...

Ah, sorry. I thought you were asking if I had a place to connect the drive to do the imaging. I shouldn't have made that assumption.

The board is a Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H. It has two Marvel sata controllers so I could do what you suggest.

thefordmccord said:
You may want to do this with the single disk installed before imaging.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...-to-ahci/4c94f678-6bd1-48a6-b871-8872c841023a
Click to expand...

Great pointer! Thanks.

It looks like you guys are saying that my only real concern is getting the raid drivers installed and enabled before the image. Is there anything else to worry about?
 
No. I've been doing this (mostly with acronis) for almost a decade until I gave up on RAID0 thanks to SSDs.
 
I decided to bite the bullet and get this done over the weekend. I began with the intent of doing an image but when I looked at the partition table on my existing windows disk I saw that it was mbr/dos. My new disks are 3tb. I searched a little but wasn't able to find a quick and easy mbr -> gpt conversion for an existing windows 7 install. I ended up doing a fresh windows install and holy crap was it painful.

I had no idea Windows 7 was so flakey about uefi + gpt installs. It was weird about recognizing my raid too. I had to tear it down and rebuild it for the installer to recognize it as a raid rather than separate disks. Is windows 8 any better about uefi + gpt installs?
 
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