Hi all,

I wish to establish a RAID 0 back-up/recovery stategy.

Sysytem:
P4C800e deluxe; P4 3.2Ghz; 512Mb Twinx Corsaire;
RAID 0 = 2 x 120Gb SATA Seagate HDD;
Liton CD/DVD Combo; Liteon DVDRW; standard video;
USB VideoMate Live TV.
RAID0 = SATA on Promise 378

I am thinking of installing a non-RAID SATA 120Gb HDD - but where on the board would I install it.

Making a Nortons Ghost image of the RAID 0 would only supply me a source with which to recover a damaged o/s and MBR? Does Norton Ghost work/do this?

The Ghost image itself if placed on another single non-RAID HDD could not function as an o/s on the new HDD as it is configured as a RAID with drivers and mbr info etc?

Thus I should manually install o/s and programs on the New HDD as a backup O/S on one partition for when RAID breaks and a Ghost image of RAID0 on another partition for recovery - if possible and or burn to CDs ??

I understand that if a RAID 0 breaks the steps are something like:
Check all cables and or replace.
Check BIOS Mobo and Controller to make sure not corrupted.
Go into the Promise controller BIOS delete the array, then remake it - then immdeiatley use something like Mrecover or testdisk (these programs (unfortunately) I think havent been written for NTFS).
and so on - I dont know the rest - does anyone have a check list of procedures to apply?

Would be good to have a standard detailed procedure for recoverying from RAID0 failure - since I have seen so many questions posted on the net about it.

Thanks all.

I wouldn't be over-concerned about ghosting an image of the array onto either an IDE or SATA HDD, or onto CDs or DVDs or a tape drive for that matter.

The only thing is that if you have a single partition of 240GB that is fairly full then any image file, even if compressed, is going to be a very large file.

The Ghost image itself if placed on another single non-RAID HDD could not function as an o/s on the new HDD as it is configured as a RAID with drivers and mbr info etc? Not so. The image can be restored to a SATA or an IDE drive onto a partition or an array and should function just fine BECAUSE YOU WOULD STILL NEED THE DRIVERS INSTALLED TO SEE ANY PROMISE ARRAY EVEN FROM A NORMAL IDE DRIVE. It's just more normal to install them on the IDE drive after the installation rather than during the setup of Win2K/XP by pressing F6 when installing onto RAID/SCSI.

The MBR is also a red herring. Any decent imaging software rewrites the partition tables of the MBR during the restoration process.

If you need to restore the array. First rebuild the array and then treat it like you would any other "single hard drive" and simply restore your image file to its unallocated space - or fdisk or partition it first if you so desire.

PS If you have run out of hard drive connections you would need to install a pci card with additional and appropriate connectors on it. Personally I would install a large IDE drive for the backup images.

Thanks - that is Great! Feel safer already.

I have two partitions. O/S WinXp Pro is on 40Gb Partition and Data is the remaining 200Gb for satellite digital, tv, video, recording and editing etc.

My Mobo Asus P4C800e dlxe has plenty of connections for additional HDD. I gues I should find a SATA plug somewhere off the RAID Promise controller - an examination of my manuals should answer this question.

I used to have a Win98 single disk system with 2 x Win98 and Chinese Win98 on their own partitions. With the second win98 being a backup O/S by using Partition Magic - plus made 'Drive Image' back up disks.

If I can treat the RAID 0 almost like it is an ordinary single disk then my concerns were ill placed. My main concern is not data (easily taken care of) but keeping the RAID0 with O/S up and running. RAID0 is sooooo brialliant for what I am doing I would slash my wrists without it.

If I Ghost the 40 Gb partition that has O/S & Programs to a new HDD I should be able to restore it if o/s system or RAID0 system go "bang"??
(I have already made the winXP version of a full backup of O/S to the data drive.)

Thus could I ??
In such a failure instance (dead RAID) and at worst if 'all' other resurection methods fail - delete the (broken) array (replacing a HDD if one is dead), format both disks, recreate the array and burn the ghost o/s image to the array. Could Norton's ghost floppy disk do this given that the image would be of NTFS system??

I would prefer the additional HDD to be non-RAID with O/S on one partition and Ghost and data backups on another. Is there any trick to having two o/s on two disks?

:p

Could Norton's ghost floppy disk do this given that the image would be of NTFS system?? Disk imaging software works at a low level - below that of the file system itself. So the format of the partition is irrelevant as far as the software is concerned; the software is only concerned with reading and writing the sectors on the drives with noughts and ones.

Is there any trick to having two o/s on two disks? Not really but there are a lot of variables depending largely on the OSes involved and what your mobo's BIOS setup supports. Without drive overlay boot managers it is hard/impossible to boot Win9X on another drive from the boot hdd as set in the BIOS setup but it is relatively easy to boot Win2K/XP on any partition from any bootable HDD or from a correctly prepared bootable floppy diskette. Installing the OSes (or restoring them from image files) is best done in the historical order that the OSes were created. It is not generally a good idea (and may cause real problems) if an older OS, say Win98, is installed after, say WinXP.

If I Ghost the 40 Gb partition that has O/S & Programs to a new HDD I should be able to restore it if o/s system or RAID0 system go "bang"?? Put simply yes. The image file of the OS partition should be capable of being restored to either an array or to a single physical HDD - as long as one is using the same motherboard and BIOS. It is generally wisest to restore individual partitions to the same positions they were in (on the array or on the hdd) when the image file was made.

My main concern is not data (easily taken care of) but keeping the RAID0 with O/S up and running. If the performance boost is not that important to you but down time is if one HDD fails then consider using RAID1 or RAID5 instead of RAID0.

Originally posted by Paul Komski
Disk imaging software works at a low level - below that of the file system itself. So the format of the partition is irrelevant as far as the software is concerned;

That's not entirely true. Norton Ghost and others DO deal with the filesystem, which is why they specify support for certain filesystems. This is why I can't use Norton Ghost because it doesn't support my choice of linux filesystem. Unless they have changed that method in recent versions.

Others like g4u take a direct sector reading approach, which bypasses this limitation but can increse the image size if the hard drive has data in the 'empty' space.

Good point but I think there are two separate issues. The making of the image itself (a low level activity) and saving the image file somewhere, which involves the file system. Earlier versions of Ghost may not have been able to save cloned drives/partitions TO an ntfs partition but from Ghost 8 (http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/ghost.nsf/docid/2003081515143925?Open&src=&docid=2000012811284125&nsf=ghost.nsf&view=docid&dtype=&prod=&ver=&osv=&osv_lvl=) on they state that one can "Back up, restore, or clone FAT, FAT32, NTFS (DOS, Windows 2000/XP/NT/9x), and Linux Ext2/3 file systems".

I have to admit it is not software I am that familiar with - but the last time I used Ghost it ran only from floppies, which is one of the reasons I became familiar with Drive Image, which was quicker off the mark about support for NTFS file systems and running things from within Windows. Hope I haven't led anyone astray.