Windows 7 Moving windows 7 from RAID 5 to SSD

Airhead315

New Member
Ok,

So I put together a new HTPC and purchased 4 2TB drives which gave me a total of 6 TB after setting them up as RAID 5. I created two volumes from that RAID, one is 2 TB and the other is 4TB.

Windows 7 is currently installed on the 2TB volume, though it only occupies about 17Gb.

I just received my 64Gb SSD and am trying to migrate windows 7 to it. I created a system restore image using the built in windows 7 utility.

I went to restore the image onto the SSD and noticed I had no options in terms of what HD to restore the image onto, which leads me to believe the image would be restored over the current windows 7 install on the 2TB volume. Conventional wisdom tells me to disconnect the RAID drives so only the SSD is available but the 2nd volume(6TB) on the RAID contains all of my media. I am unsure of whether I can disconnect all the raid drives and boot without them without completely destroying the RAID.

In other words, can I unplug all of the RAID drives temporarily and will the Intel Raid controller retain thier configuration so when I plug them back in they will begin to function normally again? Or will the RAID be lost if the system is booted without them connected?

The RAID in question is a SATA RAID using the onboard intel raid controller on an ASUS P7P55 Deluxe MB.

Thanks,
Aaron
 
Hey.

I would try using something like Clonezilla live to clone off the RAID to the new SSD.

When done, set the pc bios to boot to the new SSD. There may be complications about the boot files though. if there is, please get back to us and we can easily help you with this aspect of it.

Clonezilla

Good luck!
 
Just in case it might help, if you backup an image using Windows Backup and Restore, it seems to need a drive as large or larger as the total partitioned space backed up to be able to restore the image.

So, can you reduce the size of the Win 7 partition enough to allow the backup to a 64 GB drive? All other space on the 2 TB drive probably needs to be left unallocated before you do the backup image. If this is a RAID, there may be a possibility the second partition would also have to be unallocated, but I have no experience with RAID.

If not that, maybe another utility, like TorrentG suggested or a pay version of Acronis.

Have you been having any problems using a 4 TB partition? I heard 2 TB was the limit, but that may just be for the OS.
 
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