W7 software RAID 1 - Migrate to new W7 OS need help

Modular · 17 May 2014

Hi All,

I have an older HTPC with W7 Pro that I made a software RAID 1 array in strictly for data. The OS is on a separate drive.

I just built a new HTPC and want to move one of the drives from the array over to the new PC. How do I go about migrating one of the RAID 1 drives over to the new build? Is it as simple as uninstall from the old pc and install in the new one?

I don't want to rebuild the array as I'm going to use Acronis as a backup to a slave drive and NAS. These are data only drives. The OS is on an SSD in both computers.

andrew129260 · 18 May 2014

Please post back a screenshot of your maximized Disk Management drive map and listings:

1. Type Disk Management in Start Search box.
2. Open Disk Mgmt. window and maximize it.
3. Type Snipping Tool in Start Search box.
4. Open Snipping Tool, choose Rectangular Snip, draw a box around full map and all listings.
5, Save Snip, attach using paper clip in Reply Box.

Tell us what is on each partition.

Check also the BIOS settings to see if you have a RAID controller pop-up when you first boot the computer which must be disabled in additon to the setting change to AHCI.

You'll likely have to move your data off the RAID first to unRAID it.

Modular · 18 May 2014

Update: I simply moved the 2 drives over to the new install and individually imported them as a Foreign Disk. I could have imported the array and it would have been operational, but there was no information on doing this anywhere that I could find. Perhaps my google-fu just sucks.

If anyone is ever in this situation and runs across this thread here's some advice: import the whole array over as a foreign disk. This keeps the RAID 1 array operational.

I wanted to break the array and use a different strategy for redundancy, but I still should have imported the whole array and then broken the array using the Storage Manager in Device Manager.

Because I imported my disks individually, Windows said that they were failing their redundancy check, and I had no option available to rebuild the array in the drives. I ended up formatting them one at a time and swapping the data that I wanted between the drives as I did so. It was a bit of a pain in the butt.