A
astanko
Hi all!
I have successfully completed a pretty complicated setup process and
would like to share the steps with you. The aim was to transfer my
WinXP system from an old computer to a new one. On the old computer I
had an IDE drive connected to an AMD board. There I had a WinXP
partition (C
and a data partition (D. The new computer has an Intel
945G Chipset board with SATA RAID Controller (ICH7R chip). On the new
board I wanted to create a RAID-1 mirror (2 harddrives) and also
perform automatic software backups with Norton Ghost 10 to a third
harddrive. Dell uses a simillar setup on their new computers - it is
called DataSafe. Here are the steps I went through (hope I don't mix up
something):
1. I bought a Promise SATA PCI controller, put it inside the old
computer and installed the drivers. The aim was to have a PCI HDD
controller which I can install on the old and on the new motherboard so
WinXP can boot directly from it. Actually a missing controller driver
is the main problem when transferring XP to a new motherboard - XP
stops with a bluescreen and does not boot. Having this PCI controller I
did not even have to do a repair install
2. The Promise PCI SATA controller also helped me to transfer the whole
IDE drive to the new SATA drive. This was still done on the old PC and
I used Norton Ghost to copy the drive (under WinXP).
3. I put the Promise SATA PCI controller into the new computer and
connected the SATA drive to it. Then I booted to WinXP without problems
because the Promise driver was already installed. XP detected some new
hardware devices but of course I installed the Intel Chipset INF Files
so that XP could detect *all* new hardware. Then I installed all
drivers for the new devices. Actually there were no problems, only the
onboard Intel High Definition Audio Sigmatel driver did not work - XP
just did not want to "see" this device. On a fresh XP install the
device would have been detected without problems. Maybe a repair
install would do the trick but I have not tried this.
4. Because I had enabled the Intel RAID controller in the BIOS of the
new motherboard (still no devices attached to it) the controller got
detected in WinXP and it wanted to have drivers. I pointed it to the
"F6 Intel Matrix Storage driver floppy disk" that is available on the
Intel website. The RAID drivers got installed and the RAID controller
was now available under XP.
5. Now I had a "RAID-READY" system. Intel says this is only possible
when doing a fresh XP install but as you see this is not the case
Because I had the RAID controller drivers installed, I could now
install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager software. It installed without
problems.
6. I connected my SATA drive and another blank SATA drive of the same
type to the Intel Matrix Storage controller. With both drives I was
prepared to do a RAID-1 mirror setup. The migration to RAID-1 was done
under XP with the Matrix Storage Manager. Now the Intel RAID option ROM
also showed that I have a RAID-1 mirror array with two drives.
7. Now to the software backups: My concern was if I can do backups of
my RAID-1 data with Ghost 10 and more important if I can restore them
(especially because of RAID). Intel support told me that the RAID-1
meta information is stored on the drives and not in the option ROM, I
was concerned how Ghost will handle that extra info. To see the results
I attached a third SATA drive and set up Ghost 10 to do backups to that
drive. You can also use an external drive if you prefer, but for fast
incremental backups internal SATA drives are much faster.
8. Now I had to test the image restore functionality of Ghost 10. I
disconnected the two RAID-1 drives, left the backup-drive attached and
connected a blank drive. I booted from the Ghost CD (it already had
drivers for my Intel RAID, so no F6 install needed). I restored the
image from the backup-drive (drive number three) to the blank SATA
drive I had connected. The image was successfully restored and booted
without problems. The drive with the restored image was shown as a
normal NON-RAID (!) drive. I suppose if I wanted to make it again
RAID-1 I would have to put in a second drive and do the migration with
the Intel Matrix Storage Manager again.
That's it. Now I have transferred my WinXP with all the data to a new
computer and have a very nice RAID/Backup setup that protects me
against hardware and software failures. And it seems to work although
Intel sais: We don't support Symantec products and Symantec sais we
don't support Intel RAID products. It is really disappointing how few
information one can find on the sites of such big companies. But
fortunately we have forums and newsgroups. I hope my tutorial helps you
Regards,
Anguel
I have successfully completed a pretty complicated setup process and
would like to share the steps with you. The aim was to transfer my
WinXP system from an old computer to a new one. On the old computer I
had an IDE drive connected to an AMD board. There I had a WinXP
partition (C
and a data partition (D. The new computer has an Intel945G Chipset board with SATA RAID Controller (ICH7R chip). On the new
board I wanted to create a RAID-1 mirror (2 harddrives) and also
perform automatic software backups with Norton Ghost 10 to a third
harddrive. Dell uses a simillar setup on their new computers - it is
called DataSafe. Here are the steps I went through (hope I don't mix up
something):
1. I bought a Promise SATA PCI controller, put it inside the old
computer and installed the drivers. The aim was to have a PCI HDD
controller which I can install on the old and on the new motherboard so
WinXP can boot directly from it. Actually a missing controller driver
is the main problem when transferring XP to a new motherboard - XP
stops with a bluescreen and does not boot. Having this PCI controller I
did not even have to do a repair install
2. The Promise PCI SATA controller also helped me to transfer the whole
IDE drive to the new SATA drive. This was still done on the old PC and
I used Norton Ghost to copy the drive (under WinXP).
3. I put the Promise SATA PCI controller into the new computer and
connected the SATA drive to it. Then I booted to WinXP without problems
because the Promise driver was already installed. XP detected some new
hardware devices but of course I installed the Intel Chipset INF Files
so that XP could detect *all* new hardware. Then I installed all
drivers for the new devices. Actually there were no problems, only the
onboard Intel High Definition Audio Sigmatel driver did not work - XP
just did not want to "see" this device. On a fresh XP install the
device would have been detected without problems. Maybe a repair
install would do the trick but I have not tried this.
4. Because I had enabled the Intel RAID controller in the BIOS of the
new motherboard (still no devices attached to it) the controller got
detected in WinXP and it wanted to have drivers. I pointed it to the
"F6 Intel Matrix Storage driver floppy disk" that is available on the
Intel website. The RAID drivers got installed and the RAID controller
was now available under XP.
5. Now I had a "RAID-READY" system. Intel says this is only possible
when doing a fresh XP install but as you see this is not the case
Because I had the RAID controller drivers installed, I could now
install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager software. It installed without
problems.
6. I connected my SATA drive and another blank SATA drive of the same
type to the Intel Matrix Storage controller. With both drives I was
prepared to do a RAID-1 mirror setup. The migration to RAID-1 was done
under XP with the Matrix Storage Manager. Now the Intel RAID option ROM
also showed that I have a RAID-1 mirror array with two drives.
7. Now to the software backups: My concern was if I can do backups of
my RAID-1 data with Ghost 10 and more important if I can restore them
(especially because of RAID). Intel support told me that the RAID-1
meta information is stored on the drives and not in the option ROM, I
was concerned how Ghost will handle that extra info. To see the results
I attached a third SATA drive and set up Ghost 10 to do backups to that
drive. You can also use an external drive if you prefer, but for fast
incremental backups internal SATA drives are much faster
.8. Now I had to test the image restore functionality of Ghost 10. I
disconnected the two RAID-1 drives, left the backup-drive attached and
connected a blank drive. I booted from the Ghost CD (it already had
drivers for my Intel RAID, so no F6 install needed). I restored the
image from the backup-drive (drive number three) to the blank SATA
drive I had connected. The image was successfully restored and booted
without problems. The drive with the restored image was shown as a
normal NON-RAID (!) drive. I suppose if I wanted to make it again
RAID-1 I would have to put in a second drive and do the migration with
the Intel Matrix Storage Manager again.
That's it. Now I have transferred my WinXP with all the data to a new
computer and have a very nice RAID/Backup setup that protects me
against hardware and software failures. And it seems to work although
Intel sais: We don't support Symantec products and Symantec sais we
don't support Intel RAID products. It is really disappointing how few
information one can find on the sites of such big companies. But
fortunately we have forums and newsgroups. I hope my tutorial helps you
Regards,
Anguel