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#110
WINDOWS 7 RAID 1 / MIRROR OF SYSTEM DRIVE
... and how it affects system recovery.
I apologize for posting (slight) misinformation, but it was just a minor mistake, and I can now spell things out a bit better. And I will make it short. If anyone is intested in fine detail, please PM me.
Backing up a system image with Windows 7 native utility is straightforward, if slow.
Removal of either of the two disks is fine, and one can boot off the other. The original system, pre-mirroring, remains the boot drive until it has failed/removed, at which point one boots off the 'secondary plex'.
THUS THE FUNDAMENTAL REQUIREMENT OF MIRRORING IS MET. However, continue...
With secondary plex removed, one can do a restore of system image to the orignal disk.
With original disk removed, one cannot do a restore to the secondary plex. Everything goes well until step 9 in Shawn's original 'how to' on this thread. At that point, the Step 9 screen appears for some moments and then a restore failed screen appears saying that the restore disk is unsuitable for backup, or some such words. A big error message comes up (if you want to know what it says, PM me) which is quite unhelpful, for example suggesting the disk it knows about might be offline.... Having tried everything which is suggested in the repertoire, including invoking a repair, and one or two ideas of my own, I stopped.
My conclusions are more or less the same as before. The RAID1 / MIRROR works as it should and will do what is intended, continuing in the case that one disk fails. But it will not allow restore to the secondary disk. As failure of one disk may have implications for the integrity of the remaining disk, implying a restore of a recent backup, it will not do this without a fight. Not for naive users.
I am not going to mirror my system disk. I belong to the school which expects things to work, and if they don't, I am prepared to do a certain amount of techy stuff, but I am not a Windows 7 development engineer!!
Incidentally, after finishing my tests, I wanted to return my P4 platform back to its old XP state. Acronis could see the disk, but greyed it out as unusable
I had to fire up to DISKPART with my Windows 7 installation disk and get rid of the whole Windows 7 setup and partitioning of the disk:-
Fire up the Windows 7 repair or installation disk, get to STEP 2 in the original post of this thread. Select Command Prompt
>DISKPART
DISKPART> LIST DISK (find out the ID of your problem disk, 1 in my case)
DISKPART> SELECT DISK 1 (make the disk having problems the focus)
DISKPART> CREATE VOLUME SIMPLE (without this, you do not have a volume)
DISKPART> LIST VOLUME (and thus identify the volume ID, in my case it was 3)
DISKPART> SELECT VOLUME 3 (make this volume the focus)
DISKPART> CLEAN (get rid of all the partitioning etc)
DISKPART> FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK (does the format to the current volume)
Now it appears in Acronis and I am back where I started.
I have now satisfied myself as to the state of affairs, and I suggest that anyone who feels I did not go far enough -- do what I did, get an old system together with two drives. Put Windows 7 on the smallest and then make a mirror with the other and do your own experiments, but until you have, don't mirror your system drive on your 'real' working system.
Geeks: if you find a way to sort out the restore to a surviving secondary plex - I'd love to know, please PM me. But suggestions as to how to do it from 'guessers' would not be welcome, try the suggestion before posting it.