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    Alienware 17 Raid0 to Raid1 using Acronis True Image

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by Alienwar, Jan 5, 2014.

  1. Alienwar

    Alienwar Newbie

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    I'm just posting this 'cos I couldn't find any info beforehand to help me, and maybe this will be useful to someone.
    I have a new Alienware 17 with 2 x HDD's and an SSD, I went for Win7 Ultimate OS. It came configured with raid 0 + SSD acceleration.... I know a lot of guys like this setup but I use my Alien for work first then games second so I cannot risk data - as you all know Raid 0 with 2 drives has 2x risk of failure compared to 1 drive... Raid 1 is much better for my purposes.

    So I am posting this in case it helps someone. This worked for me , I am not a computer idiot but I am no expert so I was working hard sorting this out.
    After much trial and error , the following works to convert Alien 17 raid 0 to Raid 1 . I used Acronis True image 2014 Pro 'cos I have it and kinda understand it.There may well be a better way.
    1/ do a back-up to a USB HDD in Acronis ( note : I also made sure before this that I had made all the Alienware Respawn discs known to man ) .... MAKE SURE YOU HAVE MADE THE ACRONIS BOOT DVD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    2/ test the backup . I made more than 1 FWIW, too
    3/ I opened the case and disconnected the battery.... easier to force a reboot if needed
    4/ reboot , press ctrl-I , delete the raid, then make a new raid 1 using the defaults and you are only using your 2 large drives.... mine has a SSD too do NOT for goodness sakes include this. say yes to all the scary warnings
    5/ you might need to press f12 to boot into Acronis DVD
    6/ choose the re-install or whatever it is called option , make entirely sure all partitions are then installed to your HDD drive ( in my case, partition 1.1 , 1.2 , C and MBR drive 1 ) . I ran into all sorts of trouble as I had it in my head that my SSD booted into my C: drive.... there goes 8 hours of my life ( the SSD seems to be the default first boot drive- I inadvertently assigned a primary active partition to the SSD , took a while to realise that this was the cause of ALL further errors from then on...you will seriously complicate your life here ) .... accept all the defaults once you have chosen the target drive ( in my case the 696 Gb drive )
    7/ reboot and all should be good.
    8/ a couple of times when nothing was working ( before I figured it all out ) I managed to go back to what I had by re-making the Raid 0 array then following all the above steps.
    9/ you can then under windows fire up the Intel Rapid storage technology program and add acceleration using the SSD drive.
    I did run into issues trying to use acronis to install the backup to a non-raid array which was my initial preference ... plain didn't work.
    Anyway , hope this helps someone . I'm sure there is a better way to have gone about this .... please post your thoughts if you can help others in the same situation. Otherwise, I am happy to help if you are wanting to take the same path.... :)
     
    Alienwar, Jan 5, 2014
    #1
    katalin_2003 and Trome71 like this.
  2. Alienware-L_Porras

    Alienware-L_Porras Company Representative

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    Thanks for sharing this solution, it may indeed help somebody in the future. +1Rep
     
    Alienware-L_Porras, Jan 7, 2014
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