Well that was scary but fun - geek fun

[EmSti]

For the last 2 and a half days I have been replacing the motherboard and switching primary os drive from raid 1 on 2 HD to a single SSD (ACHI). Goal was to not have to reinstall Windows or loose data.

It was a wild ride with my raid 1 data_vol disappearing for 2 days and having to reactivate Windows twice, but I did it. Old motherboard could do Intel raid (OS_vol) and Marvell raid (data), but the new one cannot. One or the other but not both. Then the SSD arrived and it hit me that the os_vol wasn't going to be raid. Still reactivating some software here and there, but it looks like its a success and FireDragon is back to hard core crunching with no apparent problems (crosses fingers, knocks on wood, etc.) Wish I never took the sysprep step, I think that cut too many user settings and keys. Hardest part was getting the os image cloned to SSD and getting windows to boot and figuring out the new ASUS board wasn't going to do dual raids with the different controllers.

I am a bit exhausted, I tend not to sleep when the pcs are being operated on.

\:D/

[kaptainkarl1]

I only understood about 30% of your post but congratulations. Guess who gets to bail me out next time I screw something up?

[EmSti]

I only understood about 30% of your post but congratulations. Guess who gets to bail me out next time I screw something up?

ummm Fire$torm?

[kaptainkarl1]

nope

[coronicus]

Doh >:D<

[Crazybob's Son]

I only understood about 30% of your post but congratulations. Guess who gets to bail me out next time I screw something up?

+1, but glad you got everything back up and running. I'm always weary about doing stuff to machines that are running just fine because my luck something would get messed up and then I'd be down a machine.

[Crazybob]

So now you get HBO?:) Sounds like a real PITA. I don't know much of what you said either, but glad it worked.

[Fire$torm]

Glad to hear you survived the torture! :P I can empathize....

Question: What util did you use to clone the OS? I ask because in in my Win2K days cloning never worked for me, so since then I've never bothered and just do fresh installs.

[c303a]

If you have at least 1 Western Digital HD you can download Acronis for WD at wdc.com under the support, downloads tab. I use it everytime I have to change a HD either for myself or if I am building or repairing a computer. It works great as long as you have a WD drive. If not you can get a free trial at Acronis.com.

[Fire$torm]

If you have at least 1 Western Digital HD you can download Acronis for WD at wdc.com under the support, downloads tab. I use it everytime I have to change a HD either for myself or if I am building or repairing a computer. It works great as long as you have a WD drive. If not you can get a free trial at Acronis.com.

Cool, thx. And yeppers I have a couple of WD units. Is the requirement only for DL'ing the util or needed to use?

[Mumps]

Cool, thx. And yeppers I have a couple of WD units. Is the requirement only for DL'ing the util or needed to use?

If it's anything like the Maxtor equivalent, it checks for a device from the appropriate manufacturer before it will allow you to clone. But the Maxtor tool was happy to let me clone a 40 Gig Maxtor Drive to a newer 80 Gig WD one just recently. Did the resize and cloning without any issue. :)

[c303a]

Cool, thx. And yeppers I have a couple of WD units. Is the requirement only for DL'ing the util or needed to use?

You can download it but you have to have a WD to use it unless you buy the full version from Acronis.

[coronicus]

i been using that utility from wb for a while now.. just need a wd drive in the system... so if you were cloning an ssd to a hatachi drive, just install a wb in system so that apps works.. So i keep an old WD handy just for that.

edit: now if you cloing to a dif motherboard you will want to uninstall the ide drivers and use the windows standard ide drivers. works about 90% of the time although the swap between intel cpu to amd cpu can be a little more tricky and may require the use to sysprep then a call to microsoft..

[EmSti]

+1, but glad you got everything back up and running. I'm always weary about doing stuff to machines that are running just fine because my luck something would get messed up and then I'd be down a machine.

I made the motherboard change to get to the Maximum IV Extreme-Z, which can support more GPUs than my previous board. Preping for getting 7990 cards and still be able to use existing cards. I switched to the SSD because of a sweet newegg coupon deal and an added mfr rebate. Plus, it will also drop the heat in the box by removing 2 hot hard drives in favor a low heat SSD. I had pre researched what I would need to do for the motherboard replacement without loosing anything, but didn't expect the raid issues. Going from Intel raid controller to Intel raid controller and Marvell to Marvell should have worked. Didn't expect motherboard to have built in problem. But that SDD sale saved my butt, one raid gone. That reminds me, I better get good backups going on that drive.

[EmSti]

Glad to hear you survived the torture! :P I can empathize....

Question: What util did you use to clone the OS? I ask because in in my Win2K days cloning never worked for me, so since then I've never bothered and just do fresh installs.

Macrium Reflect, free for home use. It was the first one I could find that would let me create the partions first and then clone to what I setup. For SSD, you need to have a different offset before the first partion than normal hard drives. By creating the partions manually, I didn't have to go back and do adjustments that most of the instruction have people doing.

Another utility I tried to use always wanted to delete my partition before cloning and I couldn't find a way to force the needed offset. Macrium was easy, cloned the System Reserve and resized the Primary OS partition without a hitch.

[Fire$torm]

Good stuff here. Thanks guys for the enlightenment. :-bd

[trigggl]

That sounds almost as much fun as when I switched a Gentoo installed hard drive from an older AMD based motherboard that crashed to a new one. I had to reconfigure and recompile the kernel, but other than that it went pretty smooth. I'd go into the details, but...

[EmSti]

That sounds almost as much fun as when I switched a Gentoo installed hard drive from an older AMD based motherboard that crashed to a new one. I had to reconfigure and recompile the kernel, but other than that it went pretty smooth. I'd go into the details, but...

It gets a little ugly when the OS doesn't recognize the new bells and whistles on the new MB. The best thing about projects that go sideways is learning new stuff and relearning stuff you thought you knew.