HDD Upgrade and Drive Cloning

pbdr

pbdr

New Member
I am in the process of upgrading my computer. I'm trying to do this piecemeal (i.e. upgrade components over time). I know that at some point I'm going to have to get the MOBO, CPU, RAM combo (that's all that will be left after this step), but for right now, I've upgraded the video card and am looking to do the HDD.

I currently have an IDE drive and want to upgrade to 2 SATA drives in RAID 1 config. I am planning on purchasing the drives and using a freeware program like DriveImage XML for the actual clone.

My questions:

Will this work? Can I clone my current HDD to an SATA drive? or possibly to 2 SATA drives at once? Will I have problems with drivers?

IF I complete this upgrade, will I then have problems when upgrading the MOBO, CPU, etc.? I assume I will have to reinstall the OS, but last time I did that (after replacing the CPU) it didn't reformat.

Thanks.
 
Since you are using RAID1 you should be able to copy the image to 1 drive and have the RAID manager 'rebuild' the second drive. That way you don't have to worry about getting RAID support in a preinstallation environment. With any reasonably new motherboard, you should have native mode SATA so you shouldn't need drivers unless you want to build the RAID array first.
 
Cromewell said:
Since you are using RAID1 you should be able to copy the image to 1 drive and have the RAID manager 'rebuild' the second drive. That way you don't have to worry about getting RAID support in a preinstallation environment. With any reasonably new motherboard, you should have native mode SATA so you shouldn't need drivers unless you want to build the RAID array first.
Click to expand...

I'm not actually using RAID yet. But is that an option? Can I just purchase an SATA drive and use a RAID manager to set up the second drive as a clone?
 
I beleive most (all?) RAID managers will let you do that for RAID1 especially since it's just a mirror.
 
Uh? You're going to RAID an IDE and SATA drive? What controller are you using that supports that?
 
I thought you weer trying to RAID 2 SATA drives, that's what you said in your first post?

What I was suggesting was that you use cloning software (ie ghost, clonezilla, acronis) to clone your IDE drive to one of the SATA drives and then use the RAID manager to 'rebuild' the array to get it to the last drive. You should be able to put the image on both SATA drives if your RAID manager doesn't let you copy the contents of 1 drive.
 
Sorry if there was any confusion, my question was about cloning the IDE drive (not in RAID) to an SATA drive (which will then be put into RAID).

I'm not actually at the RAID part yet, I am more concerned with being able to clone an IDE to SATA on my current system, then complete the upgrade (MOBO, CPU, etc.) without having to do a complete reinstall of all software and/or having driver difficulties.
 
That should work fine. But if you are replacing your mobo you are better off installing a windows instead of copying your installation. If you don't you will more than likely bluescreen when you try to boot. There are ways to fix it without having to reinstall, a repair install will usually do it. There are other ways too but I don't remember the exact steps.
 
So in an apparent show of my own newbiosity, I did not realize that using RAID 1 required an additional card.

I may opt for that later, but for now I'll just switch tot eh one SATA drive.

SO, one question remains:

If I get an SATA drive with my current configuration, can I clone my IDE drive onto it and run it without problem? Is there anything special I have to do for this?

When I complete the upgrade with MOBO, RAM, and CPU, will this require a reformat of the drive and reinstall of XP? Or will I be able to reinstall windows without the reformat? (I believe the second option is what happened when I upgraded my CPU previously)
 
If you keep your currrent motherboard, you can clone it to the SATA drive, no problem :)

You wont need to format when you change your motherboard, a reinstall of windows is fine.
 
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