CyberDruid

One Word: Acronis. The free trial works for this.

Today I decided I wanted to try out RAID5 instead of RAID 0 for my 4 Raptor array. Using Acronis True Image I cloned the RAID array onto a single 250GB drive. Then I deleted the RAID0 array and created a RAID5 array and using Acronis cloned the 250GB onto the RAID5 array. I took a couple of hours altogether but worked flawlessly. You just have to disconnect the source drive before rebooting to avoid boot mgr probs with Vista.

I left everything connected the first time and had to use the Repair function of the Vista install to correct the Boot MGR and some other files. But the following times I disconnected the source drive and there were no issues.

Thought this might help anyone looking for a way to move their entire installation from a small drive to a larger dirve...or for someone wanting to try out some different configurations.

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Havegooda

Ooooo, I was just thinking about this. Good to know

~Gooda~

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exnihilo

This is (Acronis® Migrate Easy 7.0) exactly what I was looking for! Thanks man. I was about start a thread asking about swapping a smaller HD for a larger one and the partition resizing complications that could go along with it. This sounds perfect! +Rep.

cg

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mortimersnerd

Great! + because its free too.

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Manyak

I keep telling people to use it but noone believes me when I say it does everything Between TrueImage and Disk Director Suite you have full control of your hard drives and the data on them. And their boot loader is light years ahead of GRUB or MS's, I'd never dual boot without it again.

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CyberDruid

Agreed. I've used it for at least a year and never see anyone posting about it so I thought WTH...

I have the Full True Image 11 and that includes the Migrate and have not had time to try out all the features but I can see that it's well crafted. If you have a spare HDD that's the right size it makes sense to clone your existing OS drive onto that and just unplug it and put it in an antistatic container and set it aside for that fateful day when you bork your OS and need to get up in running right away.

But from what I can tell if you were to use the Back Up functions of the True Image SW you would probably not need to go that far.

Plus with the way HDD prices are dropping I imagine a lot of people are "Migrating" and this is so much faster than threed days of Windows updating a new installation and finding all the drivers, and loading all the SW yada yada.

I may finally migrate off the Raptors because the Samsung F1 drives are faster. Hard to believe...I feel like I am trading in my muscle car for a tuner car...better gas mileage and better accelleration

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mortimersnerd

How is there performance in RAID5 without a dedicated RAID controller?

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kennymester

I've always used Norton Ghost and have changed my main Raid twice using it.

@Mortimersnerd - Raid5 without a discrete card will just use a lot more of your cpu to do the calculations and because of that you really don't get that great of a throughput. If you ever have the money to get an Areca get it. Totally worth it for Raid5. Even with Raid0 it gets better scores than the ICH9.

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mortimersnerd

Dont have the money now, but I will put that on my list of things to buy...

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Danylu

Acronis is a lovely suite. I use it and it has saved my ___ twice in less than half a year although I am reluctant to recommend products I use for fear of being labelled a spammer!

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