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December 2nd, 2011 09:00

Backup Restore Boot PE2850 Macrium Reflect

For fun on my home PE2850 I decided to build my Windows 7 build as RAID 0 just to see how the performance would change over RAID 5.  This was supposed to be a temporary test, but now I've built a stable system and its not so easy going back to RAID 5 without being destructive in the process.  Enter Macrium Reflect, which was free and seemed to do the necessary backup to my external USB drive.  Great, but before hitting enter on FORMAT, I figured I'd test the boot disk and restore process.  Turns out the infamous decision to not support PERC SCSI in Windows 7 and new server OS is now causing me problems.  I can boot the Macrium disk, and I can load the necessary SCSI drivers after boot, but it still won't see the RAID array. 

 

Someone on the Macrium forum also running a PE 2850 managed to add the SCSI drivers to the boot disk so it would find the drives on boot, but they forgot to post their final solution in the forum where I could use it.  http://support.macrium.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3913  The tech article link helped, but on the free version of the software I can't find the options to add drivers that they are referencing.  I'm the kind of guy that wants to see the trial version actually work before I hand over money for the full version.  Unfortunately the full version is required for support to answer your questions, leaving me in a catch-22.

 

My hope in posting here is that someone can provide a free solution for backing up a RAID 0 array and reliably restoring it on a RAID 5 array, taking into account the problems with the SCSI drivers.  I'm not tied to Macrium, so whatever free software you like to recommend is fine.  I'm also fine with iguallar doing a self google and sharing what was learned from Macrium support. 

55 Posts

December 2nd, 2011 09:00

I've got a new lead.  There is a winpe environment that downloads as the basis for the boot cd

I've got to figure out how to add the SCSI drivers there, and once I do it should work.  From what I'm reading, this still might not be easy.

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16.3K Posts

December 2nd, 2011 12:00

One thing to consider IF you have an extra drive/slot ... you can easily "reconfigure" your RAID 0 to a RAID 5 by adding a disk - while the server is "live" and without affecting current data.  If this is an option for you and you want more information, just let us know.

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