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Sata Raid Setup After Vista 64 Installation

By Leonard J Rivera Sr. ·
I know a Sata raid needs to be setup prior to installing Vista. My Raid instructions are clear. At the time of my installation, I could not setup a raid because I only had 1 drive.

So, what if I imaged my current vista drive with something like backup exec desktop recovery - restore anywhere option?

I would of course enable the raid controller in the bios and install the drivers prior to imaging.

Then I install all 4 drives, enable 0+1 raid, then restore the image?

I want to raid my current system without having to reinstall/activate Vista and every application etc..

What are my choices? Anyone know? Is there a way to possibly do this without imaging?

Any help on the topic is greatly appreciated.

System Info: Vista Ult. 64
MB: MSI K9A2 Platinum with Promise Raid.
Maxtor 500GB Hdd (one now, soon to be 4)

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Learn to use Industrial Strength Prays

by OH Smeg Moderator In reply to Sata Raid Setup After Vis ...

As you don't have a prayer any other way. You need to setup the RAID Prior to installing the OS in a case like this. It's not possible to short cut the system after the event.

Col

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You can set up Raid after the install..

by Peconet Tietokoneet-217038187993258194678069903632 In reply to Sata Raid Setup After Vis ...

But what you have to do is this:
1). Put in at least two sata drives.
2). Boot up your computer and go into the bios and look for the section on raid, where it says SATA mark it RAID. In the Raid section you will see a list like. Raid0, Raid1, Raid2 etc. next to them will be a box mark them ENABLE. Now when you boot up you will see your raid text, now you will either press F4 or F10, depending on your set up. In there you will see your drives, if you need Two drives together this will be Stripping (Raid0), if you need Mirror this will be raid1. Now when you re-boot you will see the raid text with your drives as healthy (if you marked them as boot). But you still have to boot from your old drive first. When booted you will need to copy/clone your old drive over the raid drives. You will need software like Acronis:
http://eu.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/migrateeasy/
To do the job really good.
Hope this helps you.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

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Not a big fan

by Leonard J Rivera Sr. In reply to You can set up Raid after ...

I've never been a big fan of the built in backup utility supplied with windows. However, Windows Ultimate version states a complete backup (image) of the entire system, all installed programs and settings that can be restored in the case of severe hardware failure. Would backing up my C: drive, setting up the raid, do a vista install then restore the backup seem llike a better choice since I don't have to buy a program just for one move?

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I do not rely on the built in controls in Windows.

by Peconet Tietokoneet-217038187993258194678069903632 In reply to Not a big fan

But you can try it, it should/might work. But having Third party software to do it is so much better.
SPOTMAU:
http://www.spotmau.com/products/package/full.htm
is the one of the best and it does not cost that much, it will do a full clone (have not tried it with raid) to any disk. The easy way is to have ALL of your programs on a hdd and then do a full copy over the RAID drives (depending on how many files you have) it will take a few minutes to an hour, this will also depend on your hdd speed and how much memory you have on board.

Please post back if you have any more problems or questions.

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I don't place much faith in any Windows Utility supplied free

by OH Smeg Moderator In reply to Not a big fan

with the OS. But I did see this last night advertised on TR RSJ HDD Cloning software.

It's available to use free at home or for any nonbusiness related type of thing here

http://tinyurl.com/5pe9b6

I don't know how well it works but it's got to be better than the Windows Backup Utility.

Col

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