restoring system image on a new raid 0 configuration
okay so I bought and installed a second hdd (same model as the first one of course) I'm planning on creating a raid 0 array. I'm using windows 7 64bit. I was wondering if I would be able to restore, without any problem, my system once the raid configured. I was planning on creating a system image on dvds then once the raid configured boot up from the said dvds and voilà. will the work without problems? I've seen a lot of question from people who apparently got errors when trying to restore an image after configuring a raid 1 array.
March 12th, 2010 4:01am

Hello,No, you cannot restore system image on a raid 0 configuration. There's a discussion of this topic on the following link:http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7repair/thread/9a968d83-ca5a-4a71-85e2-a013d209c713Thomas77
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March 12th, 2010 10:21am

actually that's not true the problem came from the utility itself if you read it carefully. also someone found a way with acronis image creator witch seemed more powerfull. I want to know if since then the windows utility was updated and now allows us to perform such an operation.
March 12th, 2010 3:10pm

That's a HIGHLY disturbing issue, in that I already have a Raid-0 C: drive that I'm backing up. If I were to lose one of the drives, once I replaced it would I be able to restore my Windows 7 backup? If so, how is this different than what nocturne88 is trying to do?Stated another way, let's say nocturne88 manages to get his system running on his Raid-0 C: drive... How should he back it up and be confident that he can restore it?Notably I *was* able to restore a Windows backup to a Raid-0 configuration using Vista a few years ago when I had a drive fail.Do I actually need to DO a backup restoral with Windows 7 to prove that it can be done? What would I do if such a test failed and left my system unbootable?The last thing in the world someone needs is to find out a perfectly good backup can't be restored because of an unforeseen limitation in the restoral process!!!These Raid-0 arrays are no problem for Windows to install onto in the first place; they should not be a problem for the backup restoral utility!-Noel
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March 12th, 2010 11:57pm

I have a similar issue here folks.. a bit of a background prior to stating my problem: I had my OS on a single Raptor 36 GB drive. I created an image of it, (as well as my drive used for applications (250 GB) a my drive used for games (250 GB) a drive for general storage (250 GB) and a 1 TB drive for backups images.) I have added another raptor 36 GB, identical to my other raptor, made an array raid 0 with the two in my Bios (lets not go into the merrits of a raid 0 right now please), and attempted to restore the image onto that newly created Raid 0 array. I had created a number of images using Ghost, Acronis and Windows as well just to be on the safe side. Okay... here is where I am at so far: Norton Ghost would insist on renaming my newly created Raid 0 array as something other than "C". It installed to the array, so I was happy with that, but I knew having the OS called drive "H" was going to be problematical booting up.. the curser would just stare at me blinking.. nadda.. I went on a hunch: under the assumption that if there were no other hard drives, or DVD Roms there..just those two Raptors in Raid array 0.. Windows would have no choice but to boot from it. (Assuming the MBR was well and no other issues came into play). And guess what, It did! However.. my other 4 drives were not installed yet, and that's were my apps, Games and backups were located. The OS was fully functional, but the links to the other apps, games, etc.. were broken as the HD's were not installed yet. Now this is where I am stumped.. When I hot plug them in, (ie., restore the power to those drives while the system is up and running, Windows 7 will see them, map them, apply the right drive letter to them, and I can run everything normally...EXCEPT, when I re-boot: I get the bloody blinking curser again! POST sees the arrays, sees the other drives, but the system will not boot to Windows! But if I disable all the drives, except the two drives that are in raid array prior to booting, it will boot Windows 7. Can someone tell me what the heck is going on here?! I have never been so close to resolving this headache that's been going on for the better part of a week now. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
May 28th, 2010 1:56pm

MrFizzbin100, I will take a quess and suggest the problem may be in your BIOS settings. Are you giving your Raid 0 array boot priority in BIOS. Just to be clear all modern BIOS's let you specify the boot sequence of bootable devices in/attached to your computer. I typically use the following order: 1. DVD-ROM drive, 2. Raid 0 array, 3. Disabled. If I have bootable media in the DVD-ROM my computer will first try to boot that. Sometimes I have to press a key to get it to boot the DVD or my computer will skip it and boot from the Raid 0 array. If there is no bootable media in the DVD-ROM drive my computer defaults to booting from the Raid 0 array. And I have purposefully disabled all other potentially bootable devices. So, when you re-attach your other hard drives have you tried going into the BIOS and looking at the boot priority of the bootable devices? When you attach your other drives they may be getting higher boot priority than your Raid 0 array - just a thought. Anyway, those are the thoughts that come to mind. My apologies if my reply does not help. Vincent T Randal (vtrandal) Longmont, Colorado
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February 10th, 2011 9:54am

I would like to describe my toubled experience with backing up and restoring my primary/boot partition which is set up as a Raid 0 array using 2 Crucial 256 GB SSD's (solid state drives). At first I found out the Windows 7 Backup and Restore GUI would not create a backup of my Raid 0 array if I also included a system image in the backup. So doing a little reading on the internet I found that people were successfully backing up with the wbadmin command as follows (SystemSnapshot.bat): wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:f: -allCritical -quiet In the above command -backupTarget:f: refers to my external USB hard drive. I could not get this to work with a WD MyBook essential so I switched to a Seagate Expansion USB drive. So now I can do backups that include system images from the command line. I have tried scheduling this as a daily task as follows but have not got it to work yet (CreateImageBackupTask.bat): schtasks /Create /SC daily /TN "ImageBackup" /TR c:\scripts\SystemSnapshot.bat /ST 03:00 /IT Does anybody know what's wrong with the above command. It tells me it successfully created the task but fails to run it at 3am in the morning. Maybe there is a clue in the logs (Event Viewer). For now I just run SystemSnapshot.bat manually whenever I have done some work I can't afford to lose. Anyway, now how to restore? If the Raid 0 array is so corrupt that I need to go into the BIOS and delete it and re-create it, I have found that I *cannot* restore to the new Raid 0 array. But as a test, what I am able to do is reinstall Windows 7 and use a Windows 7 repair disc to restore drive C (my Raid 0 array) using the image backup on my external hard drive. As long as I don't touch the BIOS settings for the Raid 0 array and/or delete/re-create the Raid 0 array in BIOS, the restore works just fine. So this leaves me wondering: If/when my Raid 0 array fails, what is the likelyhood that I won't have to recreate the Raid 0 array in BIOS? During my restore test I even deleted my Raid 0 partition along with it's associated System Reserved partition and then recreated/reallocated them and formatted them. I hope this is the most I ever have to do if my Raid 0 array becomes corrupt. But at least I am making regular backups. If my Raid 0 becomes so corrupt I cannot restore to it I think I might be able to restore to a regular hard drive and sell my SSD's on e-bay:) Vincent T Randal (vtrandal)
February 10th, 2011 10:39am

I have two SSD's in RAID0 on an Intel IHC10R using rapid raid. I use Windows 7 64 bit and backup with the Windows backup. In fact I have restored my system several times with the Recovery disk and the Windows backup that I keep on my NAS, since Acronis True Image Home 2010 and 2011 failed to do so. Now I only rely on the Microsoft backup. There was no problem to restore my complete system image to my RAID0 disk.
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June 18th, 2011 2:29pm

Since I made my earlier post, I have indeed restored a full Windows 7 System Image backup onto a RAID 0 array. There was no problem whatsoever. -Noel
June 18th, 2011 7:00pm

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