HDD to SSD mirror MAJOR cluster !

[johnhennley]

HDD to SSD mirror cluster !

Win 7, 64bit

For the problem at hand, page down to THE REAL PROBLEM and the bottom of this post.

I have an older HP Z600. I noticed that one of my 'mirrored' HDD had begun to 'whine' so I

thought it would be a good time to upgrade to SSDs.

I went into 'disk management' and noticed that my 'Disk 1' had a problem. Disk 1 was not the

noisy Disk.

If I booted 'secondary plex', the PC booted without error.

So my two SSD drives arrive yesterday and I install one in 'Disk1' position and go through the

mirror process, they sync'd all went fine and DM indicated no problems.

The 'Disk 1' SSD is LARGER than the HDD 'Disk 0' so my 'Disk 1' had 'unallocated' space.


I wanted to insure that the new SSD, 'Disk 1' would boot so I pulled the HDD 'Disk 0' and

attempted to boot. " no bootable drive/Disk" or similar bios message appeared.

Inserted 'Disk 1' back into PC, chose 'Primary' as the boot device and all was well.

Rebooted and chose 'secondary plex' as boot device. Booted and all is well !

So I'm still uncertain if my SSD will boot so I swap HDD 'Disk 0' to the 'Disk 1' position and SSD to

the 'Disk 0' position.

At this point, I have lost track of the 'exact' sequence of events but here are a couple of things.

The real problem is yet to surface.

After swapping drives around with and without both being inserted I now have THREE choices

in the 'mirrored' boot Disk option screen. Primary and TWO 'secondary plex' options.


Choosing 'Primary' : Normal boot results

Choosing 1st 'secondary plex' results in: 'black screen' attempting to repair, with 'unable to

repair' or something similar.

Choosing 2nd 'secondary plex' results in: Normal boot.

At this point, I have two items I'm working through:
- will the new SSD boot ?
- how do I increase the 'mirrored' SSD to it's full capacity so when I add the second SSD and

perform the 'sync', I have full capacity on both SSD drives.



THE REAL PROBLEM

Doing lots of reading on HDD to SSD swaps and most of it deals LARGER HDD to SMALLER SSD

I decided to attempt to reach full capacity on the mirrored SSD, second 'secondary plex' (I

assume).

I go into 'Admin Tools / Disk Management.

Disk 0 (HDD) shows Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump) and Type: Dynamic
Disk 1 (SDD) shows , (I don't remember what it showed exactly) but no problems and listed as

Type: 'Dynamic' with 'unallocated' of approximately 80GB.

I clicked on Disk 1 (SSD) and chose 'extend volume', what happened next floored me.

Disk 1 (SSD) changed to full capacity AND (C Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump) and

Type: Dynamic

however

Disk 0 (HDD) changed to (F Disk and only 'healthy', with Type: Dynamic

Both Disks: Layout:simple

Current 'right click' options:

Disk 0 (F : Open, Explore, Extend Volume, Shrink Volume, Change drive Letter and Paths,

Format, Delete Volume, Properties and Help.

Disk1 (C: Open, Explore, Shrink Volume, Change drive Letter and Paths, Properties and Help.

So at this point, I have no idea what will happen if I attempt to reboot.

Looking at 'files modified' today, Disk 1 shows to be the active disk. Disk 0 shows no modified

files today.

Pagefile.sys on both Disk 0 and Disk 1 are identical in size and dated yesterday about the

time this cluster started.

Looking for advice to insure I will have a bootable machine.

Am looking into into getting a complete bootable back-up in the interim.

Thanks in advance !

 

[samuria]

Its a common fault if you install 10 with 2 disks it often puts boot files on the second disk you should only install with a single disk. If you pull the second drive and it doesnt boot boot from install usb and do a repair that should create the boot files

 

[johnhennley]

ahh, Thanks Sam...., but no install was involved. The Win 7 w/ mirror has been running for years without problem. In fact, the mirror has saved me a few times from BSOD.

Its a common fault if you install 10 with 2 disks it often puts boot files on the second disk you should only install with a single disk. If you pull the second drive and it doesnt boot boot from install usb and do a repair that should create the boot files

 

[johnhennley]

as an update to the above:

I now have three drives involved, the third being 'disk 2' a HDD.

I have managed to mirror 'Disk 1' (SSD) to 'Disk 2' (HDD). Unfortunately, # 2 is whining as is 'Disk

0'.

It appears that I need a drive with a MBR in order to boot. I had thought that if 'Disk 0' were to

fail, that I was able to boot with the 'mirrored' drive (Disk 1). That is not the case.

As it stands now, all THREE drives need to be installed in order to get a good boot with mirror.

'Disk 1' appears to be providing the MBR in order to select which 'plex' and 'Disks 1 & 2' are

doing the C: Drive work.

Currently, when I get to the 'plex screen', I now have three choices:
- Secondary Plex
- Secondary Plex and
- Secondary Plex - Secondary Plex

The above second choice is the only one that provides a 'boot'

I am currently doing a backup to a forth external drive and my next step will be to remove

'Disk 0' and run a restore CD to attempt to create a MBR on Disk 1 or Disk 2

Also, it appears that I will not be able to utilize a SSD as a boot device in my PC.

 

[TechnoMage2016]

To the thousands of people who have complained on forums, that their CLONE of one drive to another has failed, I have only one suggestion....."You're using the wrong program to clone your drives".

Since 1997 I've used only ONE program for all my disk drive backups and 'CLONES'. with never a failure.

The program is "Ghost" for DOS. I boot up from a DOS disk, from where I run Ghost 11.5 (last DOS Version) and do the Disk to Disk operation and Ghost does the rest.
Ghost just doesn't care, if the OS on the disk, is DOS, xp, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 or 10, 64 or 32 bit.
It even backs up Server or any form of Linux. Or, even a data disk with no OS at all.
It just doesn't care!

I've cloned Spinners to SSD's, and SSD's to spinners. NO difference, NO problem.

As a working tech, I've had to use Ghost, literally thousands of times, over the years.
It runs in DOS and leaves the OS on the drives completely out of the equation.
It's still available on the web, as an ISO for the boot disk.

Cheers Mates,
TM