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Will This Work? - Drive Image Restoration
Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 1:19 pm
by Major_A
Right now I'm rocking a single 1TB drive where Windows is installed. I have the latest Intel software installed and running in AHCI mode. If I create an Acronis image of the drive and install 2 more drives and run them in RAID 0 will the image install correctly? It seems like it should since I already have the Intel software installed but there are different drivers for AHCI and RAID. Anyone have a clue? I don't want to reinstall all my software and games back onto my computer if I don't have to.
I am aware that RAID 0 is a bad idea. But I didn't buy 3 drives to not use all the space (RAID 1/5/10).
Re: Will This Work? - Drive Image Resotaration
Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 1:46 pm
by tekgek
Well, If you can make the Raid array appear as a single drive, then this should not be a problem. The worst that could happen is the installation fails and you have to go back to using the drives separately. But if you have the image backed up on a external hard drive then you wont loose your data anyway. The only complication I see is, you would have to install the Raid drivers in Windows before you produce the image. I'd say worth a try!
Tekgek
Oh, one more thing: How big will your boot partition be?
Re: Will This Work? - Drive Image Resotaration
Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2010 3:38 pm
by Major_A
2TB, it's a limitation with Windows/Intel RAID controller. Before Win 7the largest a boot drive could be was 2TB. Apparently they changed that to 17TB (or something like that) in Win 7. However, when I create a single 3TB array Intel's software will not allow it to be bootable. So I'll partition the 3TB array to 2 partitions. 2TB for OS and applications and 1TB for games. Stripped across 3 drives I should see a noticeable improvement in speed.
Re: Will This Work? - Drive Image Restoration
Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 12:34 am
by tekgek
Excellent, then it sounds like this should work. Good luck.
Re: Will This Work? - Drive Image Restoration
Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 6:05 am
by KnightRid
Why not keep the 1tb drive for the boot drive and just RAID the other 2? If you are not going to have any parity on them I really don't see a reason to include the boot drive in the array.
Just my opinion
Honestly you could just leave the drives separate and use each one for something different. Just throw your swap file on one of the extra drives or the RAID for better performance.
Re: Will This Work? - Drive Image Restoration
Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 8:37 am
by kenc51
I would never put ~1TB or larger drives into RAID0
The amount of bad sectors on each drive will be enormous (which are there even on a new drive), then multiply that by 2 or 3.
You should just put them into a RAID5 array.
Not going to even mention the standard risks associated with RAID0 on 3TB of data
Re: Will This Work? - Drive Image Restoration
Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:08 pm
by Major_A
I'm aware of the risks. Everything I hold a value on is backed up to 2/3 places. Even wallpapers are saved on a single drive.