Acronis issues and Imaging Raid Drives

I'm currently trying to install a 500GB Seagate 7200.4 into my buddies notebook that has 2 x 250GB drives in Raid 0. I'm using Acronis enterprise to do the imaging.

I've run into a couple problems/questions before i really get it started. Is there a problem when imaging 2 x drives in Raid 0 and restoring the image on 1 drive?

Also, for acronis, i'm having trouble getting the notebook to boot from the CD. i've even left nothing but the IDE CD drive in the boot sequence and still got nothing. it keeps telling me "No Operating System Found".

The same CD worked fine on my sager only minutes before hand. The major differences between the two are: His uses a mitsubishi Blu-Ray combo drive and mine doesn't (the Blu-Ray part that is)

Thanks for any help everyone

 

did you make the cd on yours then use it on his? that does not always work for whatever reason with acronis. also this seems to be a common issue with acronis. some systems love it and some simply hate it.

now wait.... you are trying to add or replace the current drives?

if this is the case you can image the raid array and restore it on a single disc but the raid driver will still be in effect and will still need to be set to raid in the bios for it to work right. once in windows you can re-enable the achi driver in the registry and remove the raid driver if you want to. but windows had a raid driver installed when it was setup..

now if trying to add a 500gb drive than it should not matter

btw try shadow protect WAY better than acronis in all ways imo

reread your post and yeah if trying to image the raid 0 to a single drive the raid driver will still need to be used so try setting the bios to raid if its not already and see if you can get into windows..

 

My plan was this:

Image the raid 0 and save it to an external.
Delete the raid volume in the raid BIOS
Take out one of the raid drives and swap it for the 7200.4
Restore the image on the 7200.4

After I do that your saying the 7200.4 would still have a raid driver on it? I didn't even think of that...
Would it be able to boot OS like that so I could remove the driver?

If not, how the hell could i go about doing this? Would I have to backup all important files on the raid volume and do a fresh install on the 7200.4?

 

you will have to boot into vista with the raid enabled on the single drive. i do this often for clients trust me..

yes it will still have the raid driver. it is A EXACT copy of the system the way it was prior.. nothing changed. its expecting to be reinstalled on the same system.

imo the best way is to do a disk copy using the acronis boot disk to cop to the single drive adjusting the size etc then rebooting with the single drive but yes it will need to be set to raid in the bios most likely since it still has the driver installed. you may be able to restore the image onto the single drive though but the same goes it will still "see" it as a raid 0.

once in windows you can then edit the registry and re-enable achi. reboot and set the bios to achi instead and then it should boot to windows. then you could disable the raid driver..

 

To resolve this issue, enable the AHCI driver in the registry before you change the SATA mode of the boot drive. To do this, follow these steps:
Exit all Windows-based programs.
Click Start, type regedit in the Start Search box, and then press ENTER.
If you receive the User Account Control dialog box, click Continue.
Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci
In the right pane, right-click Start in the Name column, and then click Modify.
In the Value data box, type 0, and then click OK.
On the File menu, click Exit to close Registry Editor.

 

AHH that makes things a little clearer. Very simple too, thanks for the help

+ for you

 

lmk if you need help with it..