Moving data over to new system - how would you.... ?

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GunnySpook

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Aug 17, 2006
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I'm getting ready to move to a new Conroe system, probably at the end of September. I'll be combining two old existing systems. One system has a Maxtor 200 Gig Drive in it, and the other has two 200 Gig drives and it, a Hitachi and another Maxtor. All three drives are approximately 70% full right now.

My intent on the new Conroe system is to use the Hitachi as the primary OS drive and set up the remaining two Maxtors as raid zero. By the way the system will not be overclocked. All 3 drives are IDE, running on a Promise card and the MB will be an Intel Bad Axe.

How would you deal with migrating the data on these? I suspect that the Hitachi will need to be completely reformatted and the OS (Windows XP) reinstalled, and the two drives destined to be raid 0 will also in effect have to be cleared.

So how do I migrate all this data? How would you do it? I have dual DVD writers, but I don't relish creating and burning 150 DVD's just for migration purposes. Is there a backup program you would use? Ghost?

I appreciate any suggestions anybody has.

The Gunny
 
pretty simple, u got not many options here.

since you dont have enough free space to hold ~350gb (70% roughly rounded ;p ) ( cuz u wanna do raid, so both got to b formated together )...

either you delete a lot of junk you got. or burn lot of DVDs.

or forget the raid idea.

And why not use the raid 0 for your OS and operations? faster access/writing time...
my 2cents...
 
Agree about the junk - problem is, I got it to 70% by deleting junk! :)

Give me your thoughts on using raid for the OS - all three drives in the same array?

The Gunny
 
nah, just do a raid 0 with 2 identical drives. simple.
but also, that's just my opinion, dont really think you will really see a diff between a raid 0 and non raid in your setup. for your personal use.

i coudl be wrong if you like editing movies/music. otherwise... i wouldnt really bother. and easier to throw everything on 2 drives, format one, installs Windows yada yada then split your files proprely over the 3 drives hehe
 
nah, just do a raid 0 with 2 identical drives. simple.
Click to expand...
Silly response from someone that doesn't know how RAID works.
You'll loose ALL your data on the two HD you set up the RAID array, it must be built from scratch.
The only option you have is, as told by others, delete all that you don't really need and backup the rest on DVD or on an external USB drive (you can ask a friend to use his USB drive for some days...)
 
silly answer yourself.
i wasnt saying to lose all his data.

the factor of the drives being filled weren't taken in consideration.
was just a suggestion for the final set up. after backing up... try to keep up to a conversation first then you can criticism someone's opinion.
 
um....get a friend to store the data temp for you?
other then that there is no realistic option for you since you have to delete all the data on 400gb of your hdd. a cheeky option that might work though not likely is to order a hard drive big enough to store all the data, format+RAID your 2 hdds then ship the other one back for a refund...though ofcorse there is always the problem that they will refuse you and either you will end up with an extra hdd that you dont need or about $300 worth of store credit
 
but going 0+1 would require 2 more drivers. total of 4.
don't think he wants to invest that much HD setup for a home computer.
imo
 
You're right - I just don't need to be spending the money to approach a TB of storage! Just getting to Conroe is expensive enough!

The reason for Raid: This system is mainly securities analysis - current processign is overnight, 6 - 7 hours on a 1 Gig PIII. Two of the dirtectories of transaction data are 78 Gigs and 55 Gigs. HEAVY access by analysis programs.

That's what I was hoping to improve through the overlapping with Raid.

As to reliability (Raid 1), if I lost one of these drives, whether in Raid config or not, I'd still have to reconstruct the data. Painful, but doable. So why not have the benefits of Raid until failure?

Does that help?
 
if downtime is not a problem for you, then ya stick to raid 0.
but if it's crucial to be up and running all the time, then i would suggest getting 2 more drives to have the raid+1 config ( with the 0 to have better perfomance ).

because in a 0+1 config, even if 1 drive fails, the system keeps going. which gives you time to get replacement, then you replace, hot swappable or not... the downtime will be minimal.
but that is up to you to judge if downtime is aproblem for your operations.
 
You do NOT have to format your OS drive. You can simply install Windows into a NEW directory. You will have to reinstall all your programs, but you preserve any data on the drive. You can delete the old OS later on.

This does not give you a clean drive, but it gives you a clean OS.

Since you don't want to back up to DVD (and I would not suggest it, having done it, and having learned that some of your DVD's may not be 100% reliable), I would recommend against raid 0 on your two aux drives.

Regardless, I fully support your idea not to stripe your OS, I would never stripe my OS with raid 0. In the event of a drive failure, it only compounds the headaches of losing data with not booting.
 
Does anyone know how well Jbod fairs when it comes to data recovery? i know the data isnt striped but, does it work by filling up one then the other? or is it pretty random?
i just wanted to know, also it might be a viable alternative to RAID 0, i.e. if you want a single 400gb drive rather then 2 200gb drives
 
I would take a drive that is not being use ( or migrate all the data off it) format it and be sure to make it a basic disk. Slave that drive to each system with files you need. Then use ghost to pluck out the directories you want and create separate a few images. ( break it up for easy manageability). Once you've built a clean instance of XP, reverse the process.
 
Thanks, guys.

Although I've still got the migration challenge, the discussion has been very helpful. Also, just knowing that there is nothing major that I've overlooked in analyzing my choices is reassuring, in a twisted sort of way. :)

The Gunny
 
JBOD has absolutely no performance gains, it's easy to recover data since it doesn't stripe, you only loose what's on the dead drive.

I'd do RAID0, anyone that's had a RAID0 fail did something wrong (too hot, or too much vibration) or bought maxtors.

Buy a couple 320's and RAID0 them, put you swap file on one of your other drives, and disperse the rest of your files as you see fit. Or take your two identical drives and RAID0 them as well as 2x320's and put the swap on that, super zippy :) BTW 320's are the current price per gig champ.
 
Thanks, Michael.

Tell me more about your suggestion: My two existing similar drives (nice shot at Maxtor, BTW, :) ) are both IDE. I can't see buying IDE drives anymore, so SATA for the 320s, right?

Now, can you intermix IDE & SATA drives in one Raid array? Is it a common controller functionality? I would have thought it was two different controllers. Or do you suggest a SATA pair in one array and the IDEs in a different array? I don't even know if that's doable - I'm a noob at Raid.

The Gunny
 
Most iterations of NVRAID allow spanned RAID over ide and sata. Yes get sata assuming you have the ports.

I'd do the 320's in a RAID0 on SATA and your existing drives RAI0 on IDE.

For around $200, you'll more than double your space, and I'd set aside 10-20 gig on the old drives for a duplicate of your really important stuff if you are concerned about reliability.

BTW, I have 2x200GB Maxtors in a RAID0 and they've run strong for over a year now. But I've seen more Maxtors fail than anything, other than deathstars of course.
 
I'm getting ready to move to a new Conroe system, probably at the end of September. I'll be combining two old existing systems. One system has a Maxtor 200 Gig Drive in it, and the other has two 200 Gig drives and it, a Hitachi and another Maxtor. All three drives are approximately 70% full right now.

My intent on the new Conroe system is to use the Hitachi as the primary OS drive and set up the remaining two Maxtors as raid zero. By the way the system will not be overclocked. All 3 drives are IDE, running on a Promise card and the MB will be an Intel Bad Axe.

How would you deal with migrating the data on these? I suspect that the Hitachi will need to be completely reformatted and the OS (Windows XP) reinstalled, and the two drives destined to be raid 0 will also in effect have to be cleared.

So how do I migrate all this data? How would you do it? I have dual DVD writers, but I don't relish creating and burning 150 DVD's just for migration purposes. Is there a backup program you would use? Ghost?

I appreciate any suggestions anybody has.

The Gunny
Click to expand...

There's an alternative if you don't mind using your hitachi drive as the primary drive (assuming it has Windows installed).

Copy as much as will fit from the other 2 drives, onto the hitachi. Whatever is left, well, DVD burning, or buying a backup drive is your only bet there. Maybe this process will cut down the number of required DVDs from 150 to maybe less than 50?

Then, use a Microsoft utility called sysprep (the actual command will be something like "sysprep -pnp") to put the hitachi into "OEM" mode, meaning it will perform PnP during the next start up. It will attempt to find all your devices just like when you first installed Windows.

Then once you have windows working in your new system, use the driver disk that came with the motherboard to add a raid array. Many motherboards have different ways of setting up the RAID on an existing machine. Use the method that is specified in the manual. In many cases, it just involves activating the RAID BIOS via jumper or BIOS (again, read the manual for instructions), going into the RAID BIOS and creating an array, and then booting into Windows where you should see the newly created volume.
 
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