I was told this was possible, but don't know if that is true. If it can be done, please point me to useful directions on how to do it.
Current situation: My XP system and all programs and data are on a RAID (0) striped array. I know this is a dangerous configuration, so I want to de-strip the RAID onto a new hard drive for stability.
I want the programs I currently am using to work when I move them to the new drive (i.e. the registry settings must still work). I want the new drive to replace the striped array and work just like it all does now.
I'm assuming that I would make a backup image of the current C: drive (the array), then put that on the new drive and rename it as the C: drive.
Is this going to work, or am I dreaming? What special considerations should I have?
I would go back to your source of this information and ask for specific instructions on how to do it. My feeling is that it is not going to work. Is there any capability to set up a mirror drive that is not Raid 0 striped?
When I tried to use Ghost 2003 to create a copy of my RAID (0) array my computer froze half way through it. Upon restart, it wouldn't boot, because it was stuck addressing the hidden partition Ghost created. It took me five hours with Norton support to get rid of the partition. It involved downloading several hundred gigs, a version of Ghost 14, to fix it.
I got a full version of Ghost 14 and was able to create a disk image of the RAID (0) array, basically de-striping the array. I have not attempted to mount it, as it is a couple hundred gigs. I'm wondering if I were to copy the image to a new hard drive if it would work exactly as the original, with all the registry entries functioning properly.
I have used Ghost 14 to backup RAID 0 drives and restored to standard SATA drive. The backup works and the restore works. However, I found that the partition tools on Norton Ghost (SRD) do not work on RAID drives, at least they don't on mine (NVidia RAID controller) so I boot with the Vista install disk and setup the partition, stop there and boot into the SRD and do the restore.
This was my configuration:
Original: 2 RAID 0 drives that looks like C:\
New: 2 SATA drive that look like C:\ and D:\
You need to make sure that there is enough space on the drive you are going to restore to. That is RAID 0 of 2 drives is almost double the storage of 1 drive. If the data will not fit onto one drive you might have a problem.
I can't remember the exact options but you will need to make sure you select the options for setting up the MBR so that the restore will still boot after it is restored.