2 Computer Q's: getting rid of RAID 0, and installing bootable OS partition on new drive

  1. Is there any way to remove a RAID 0 array without losing everything? I came into possession of a Dell XPC-600, the heaviest desktop computer known to man.
    It has two 250G hard drives in a RAID 0 array, Windows XP. I don’t want the RAID, but the computer has at least one program that I don’t have the disk for that I don’t want to lose (Office 2007), so I’m leaning towards leaving the RAID as it is. Actually, I REALLY don’t want the RAID, but even if I could replace the programs, I’m leery of messing around with it too much as it runs great right now. But if I could somehow remove the RAID and not lose stuff, I would. I only have an install CD, not a Windows XP one.

  2. Anyways, I just installed a new 1T hard drive to use as storage/backup, and it was suggested to me in this thread to install a partition with a bootable OS, which seems like a very good idea in this case. Should I use a Linux one, what size partition should I set aside, and how do I actually do this? The drive is completely unallocated right now.

  1. Why don’t you want the RAID? In RAID 0 you are getting full use of the drives with a performance boost as well, seems like a good idea to keep it to me.

  2. Like I said in your last thread, make sure your PC can boot to USB devices before you consider this. Which OS to install depends on why you want a second bootable OS and the size of the partition depends on the OS you intend to install.

mittu, I’m installing it as an internal drive, not USB. I’m guessing I need to use Linux as the OS because I don’t have XP install disks.

I don’t want the RAID 0 because if anything goes wrong with either drive, there’s no way to access any of the information. The computer’s already 3 years old. I’m used to computers where even if I can’t boot off the disk, I can take it out and read it off of another computer. I can’t do that with either of these disks in a RAID 0 array. That’s why I got the new internal backup hard drive.

The data is striped between the two drives you have to have a 3rd drive to write your data to or loose it.

You could try a back up and restore program, but I have no idea what your success rate will be.

That’s one reason I installed the 3rd internal hard drive, the 1T one in the OP.

I’ve never actually dealt with RAIDed drives, so I can’t help there. However, one thing I think would work is to image the drive, replace the hard disk (i.e., unRAID and reformat), then restore from the image. I’ve done this for an (unRAIDed) XP system – I had an image for backup purposes, the drive failed, and I just put a new disk in and restored from the image. Worked without a hitch – and I used partimage program on the SystemRescueCD linux distro, so it’s free. If this seems like something you might want to try, say so (or PM me) and I’ll provide more information.

As to installing linux, I always recommend Ubuntu to people who have no linux experience (though I prefer Debian myself). There are multiple ways of doing so – first, burn it onto a CD and try it as a LiveCD (which will run incredibly slow, so this is just to try it out); if it seems like something you’d like to pursue further, either install it to a separate partition (you’ll have to use a bootloader) or I think you can use ‘WUBI’ (again, I have no experience here, but my understanding is that you can install it from within Windows).

The guy at the computer store thought it wouldn’t work to do this because the RAID works across two disks. I have made an image using Macrium.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I wondering (and why I was sure to mention that I’ve only done this with unRAIDed disks). I’m hoping that someone with actual experience using RAIDs can/will educate me. I’m not sure how the imaging program would see the data (assuming it would even recognize the filesystem).

With a fairly small time and effort commitment, you could give it a try. I think you’d have to: (1) download/burn the system rescue iso; (2) create at least 2 partitions on your 1TB disk, the first, bootable one being at least 250GB (or 500GB? I forget what RAID0 is); (3) image the RAIDed data to partition 2 of the 1TB drive; (4) disconnect the RAIDed drives so as not to corrupt anything; (5) restore the image to the first partition of the 1TB drive; (6) see if you can boot from the now restored image.

I think that would do it…hopefully someone will poke holes in it if something is obviously wrong. I’d sure like to hear the results…

ETA: in case it’s not clear, I say to use the system rescue imaging because Macrium is on your RAIDed drives; if you’re disconnecting them – which you should to be safe – then you’re not going to be able to restore using Macrium.

Yeah, I would suggest was Digital Stimulus says above, but the problem I see is that you end up with a 500GB image on the new drive, and no way to put it back onto the original 250’s, since it obviously won’t fit.

I vaguely recall that some imaging software (Acronis?) allows you to shrink the image (or fit a size Y image onto a size X drive where Y > X) if the amount of data would actually fit. But I’m not sure.

Regarding the other question of making an extra partition for another OS, whenever this comes up I recommend against doing that and instead using virtualization software like the free VMware Server. Much less messy than dual-boot, much easier to get rid of/change.

Sorry, i’m not sure why I thought it was an external drive.

Anyway, can you tell us why you want a second OS? Your motivation for this is going to be the deciding factor on what you should use. If you just want to be able to access data on your other drives should they fail to boot then don’t bother, just use a Linux Live CD.

I don’t fancy your chances of removing the RAID0 without losing all your data. Did you install Office 2007 or did it come with the computer? If it came with it then you might get away with using the system recovery partition (if you have one) as they will usually give you options on how you want to partition the drive(s) during set up.

Failing that you could try recovering your Office 2007 serial number using Magical Jellybean and either borrow a CD to do the install or try find an Office 2007 trial download then activate it.

Well, I’ve used gparted (the go-to GUI partition editor on linux) to resize an NTFS partition. So, if all went well with imaging/restoring the RAIDed data AND if there’s less than 250GB of data on the newly restored-from-image (now unRAIDed) partition, that could be done. Then, create another image of the smaller size and restore that to one of the 250GB disks. Oh, the hoops I’ll jump through to get things just the way I want them…

What’s that? Obsessive/compulsive? Me? Well, maybe just a little… :smiley:

Whoever installed those drives as a RAID 0 should be kicked in the nuts. Why would you need a single 500G partition? It might make sense if you’ve got two small drives and need a decent sized one, but this makes no sense. What was wrong with two 250 G drives, for crying out loud?

And of course, the downside of RAID 0 is that if either drive in the array fails, the whole array fails.

:smack: No, you’re right. Once booted onto the new drive, just delete stuff and shrink down that partition, and take a new, < 250G image.

I don’t think this would be so obsessive, would it? It’s what I would do :smiley:

Very good idea. Although if it runs as slowly as Digital Stimulus says, I’d probably prefer to have it installed.

I don’t fancy your chances of removing the RAID0 without losing all your data. Did you install Office 2007 or did it come with the computer? If it came with it then you might get away with using the system recovery partition (if you have one) as they will usually give you options on how you want to partition the drive(s) during set up.

Failing that you could try recovering your Office 2007 serial number using Magical Jellybean and either borrow a CD to do the install or try find an Office 2007 trial download then activate it.
[/quote]
Office wasn’t on the original install; the previous owner put it on. I got the serial number using Belarc Advisor.

It isn’t just sticking 2 small drives together to make a big one, you also get a speed boost from doing it. It isn’t uncommon on high-end desktops as it’s an easy way to give you a large and fast drive for the price of 2 smaller slower drives, a good idea all round I would say.

needscoffee, the Ubuntu Live CD isn’t that slow, I use it quite regularly for work, it takes around 3-5 minutes to boot up which is no big deal if you are only using it for emergency recovery. The install CD you download also functions as the Live CD so seeing as you will be getting the disk one way or another you may as well give it a go and see what you think.

Well, I was bitching about how long defragging takes in the other thread. Seeing as how I just recently took ~4 hours to image a 100GB disk (over gigabit network; doing it to an internal disk should be minimum 5-15x faster), I should also acknowledge (and gripe about) the time it’d take to do another image. Oh, yeah – double that time, 'cuz it’d have to be restored also.

But I’d do it anyway. :smiley:

Yes, it’s not unusably slow, more like irritatingly slow. Totally worth it to try out and play with, install if you like what you see.

I’ve never bothered with that WUBI thing; as a Windows user, do make sure to look into it, as I’ve read good things about it and it may work very well for you.

You should be able to clone the partition with any number of tools. Just try cloning the partition to the blank 1tb. Then disable or bypass the raid controller/drives and see if it boots, just don’t reformat the raid drives until you have a new working drive in place.

Keep good notes so you can reconnect the old drives in their original configuration if it all goes sideways.

I’m typing on my phone so I can’t go on all day here but several posters need to head over to wikipedia and read the page on raid levels. There are bits and pieces of posts describing anything but a raid-0.

Why do I feel like this is directed at me? :smack:

Seriously, it’s critical to do this. If only I were one to heed my own sage advice…

Do not trust your brain… it is either evil and will betray you, or is hungry for work and seeking new challenges. Write shit down.

If you notice anything in any of my posts that is incorrect or should be clarified, I’d appreciate it if you would do so. Thanks, I don’t want to be the source of faulty information…