[SOLVED] Un-doing RAID 0

[luzhun]

Hello. I have 2 SSD drives in RAID 0 currently set for my primary boot drive and would like to undo this to make them 2 separate drives again. The SSD drive is currently being run by some software SSD controller and not a hard one.

I would like to make 1 full system image of the drives to use on a new one. If I have the system image, would I need to reinstall Windows first to the new drive or just use the image to install it all back again?

Let me know if you need to know anything else! Thank you for more information.

I also have a program called Acronis True Backup 2.0 I believe it is called if that is better than using Windows default backup features?

 

[USAFRet]

What size/make/model are the drives?
How much space is consumed in the RAID 0?

 

[luzhun]

Drives are 2 Samsung 850 Pro's 256GB each. 161GB are free from 476GB. 🆒

 

[USAFRet]

Drives are 2 Samsung 850 Pro's 256GB each. 161GB are free from 476GB. 🆒

So approx 300GB consumed space, and 256GB drives.

There is no way to squeeze that amount of data onto a single drive. Nor can you pick and choose during an Acronis/Macrium/EaseUS imaging function.

Time to start over with a clean install on one of them.

 

[luzhun]

I may just end up buying 1 big SSD drive for the main boot one and if I can get a system image onto the new one, that would be great!

 

[spinningstill]

As far as I understand its not a good practice to use RAID0 as a main boot drive. An SSD should be plenty fast on its own. I use SoftRaid. Recommend to save all data to another drive then use the software to break the drives. Can run into issues if the drives are not restored correctly.

Carbon Copy Cloner is one of the best for dong backups.

Grace and peace.

 

[luzhun]

Sweet! I'll look into Carbon Copy Cloner too! Thanks for the information!

 

[USAFRet]

Sweet! I'll look into Carbon Copy Cloner too! Thanks for the information!

Backups?
Read here:

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Solandri]

Disk cloning tools usually can't clone RAID 0 boot drives. The OS on the boot drive normally locks access to certain files and folders, so you can't clone it if you're booted into the OS. The way cloning tools get around this problem is to boot off a CD, USB, or mini partition into its own mini-OS, and clone the boot drive from there - the primary OS isn't booted so it can't lock any files.

Unfortunately, the way RAID 0 is usually implemented, the drivers for it are part of the OS. So if you boot off the cloning tool's mini-boot, it'll just see two separate drives with gibberish on them, not a RAID 0 array with a single virtual drive. The only way I could see this working is if you're using a RAID card which completely virtualizes the RAID 0 array so it appears to the system like a single drive. (OK now that I think about it, you might get it to work by creating a new OS boot drive which is RAID 0-aware, and "demoting" the RAID 0 array from boot drive to data drive. Then cloning it while the new OS is booted. But that's probably more work than simply doing a clean install on a new boot drive.)

 

[geofelt]

Here is a thought:
Go ahead and buy your larger ssd. Make it a samsung ssd of 500gb or larger.
Try the samsung ssd migration app.

Tool & Software Download | Samsung Semiconductor Global

Download various software related to your product, including Samsung Magician, designed for use with Samsung's memory products, and find related information.

www.samsung.com

I read through the documentation and I see no exclusion for raid-0.
The app is a C drive logical mover, not a bit for bit clone.
I suspect that it might work.
Even if it does not, the source is preserved and you still have a drive on which you can do a clean install.

Alternatively, if you have external backup, you could backup and restore to the new single ssd.

 

[ohio_buckeye]

Could also check a program called aomei backupper. I believe their standard version is free. I seem to remember that they had a function to copy one disk to another. So you might be able to buy a 500gb SSD as mentioned, then to connect it, run that program, and have it clone the Windows drive to the new SSD. Undo raid, connect your new drive only. Reboot. It may work.

I'm not sure with the raid, but when I've used it a couple of times before to clone the os to a new disk, I was able to unhook the old drive, hook up the new one, and the system booted. I think I had to go into computer management and use the disk management function to expand the drive to see any additional space.