How do I clone my Windows installation?

Satsumomo

I currently have 3 hard drives, 2x500 gb and 1x1.5 tb.

Win7 is installed into one of the 500gb drives, now what I want to do is create an image of my Win7 drive, put it into the 1.5tb, then create a RAID-0 setup on the 500gb drives and put the Win7 installation there. How would I do this?

I already tried using Win7's image backup, but it only lets me install the image on to the original drive or something, it was a real pain how limited my options were. Acronis TrueImage apparently is very picky with dynamic disks (Raid) so what are my options, and how can I do this? I also tried using Acronis Trueimage to manage the Windows image, but the image was unbootable.

uean

Download Clonezilla and burn it to CD. Boot your computer from the Clonezilla disk and follow the prompts. When prompted, insert your USB drive, then select that drive as home/partimg when prompted, and finally select your C drive as the source. Wait for awhile (Win7 images take a long time to create with Clonezilla, not sure exactly why).

You don't need to put the image on the 1.5TB drive if you're just going to put it back onto the 500GB RAID 0 (and btw, why not do RAID 1+0 instead?). For safety sake, do a test of the image by writing it back to the 1.5TB drive. Clonezilla can restore images/partitions back to drives that are bigger, but not the other way around (imaging a 1.5TB and trying to put it onto a 500GB, even if you only have 30G of data, will fail). If the test image succeeds, format your two 500GB drives, then set them up as RAID 1+0 in the RAID controller. When that's done, just restore the image back to the single logical RAID drive and you're good to go.

You don't need to do the test write back to the 1.5TB drive - you can just image the 500GB, then format and set them up in RAID, and restore the image to the single logical drive, but I always like to test an image before wiping critical data, so its a good idea.

uean

I should mention that to do a proper RAID setup like you're asking for you should have a motherboard with a built in RAID controller. Trying to do RAID through windows via dynamic disk isn't a good option, and if you want to go that route, my method listed above isn't going to work. That's software RAID, and Clonezilla won't pick up that you are treating the 2 500GB drives as a single logical drive as they're not recognized as such until the OS loads.

Research your mobo, check your BIOS, and look for RAID options. If you have a RAID controller, you'll see it in your BIOS and will be able to enable it, then on reboot get into the RAID controller options and set up the drives in whatever configuration you desire. Make sure to do this AFTER imaging the single 500GB drive though.

Satsumomo

Thanks for the info!

The RAID is done with the Intel controller that comes with my motheboard, ASUS P8P67 PRO. Windows install is on a 80gb partition on the 500gb, I suppose it copies the partition and not just the whole disk, right?

The Intel RAID screen shows right after POST, before entering the OS, so I suppose it does work, no?

uean

Yes if the Intel RAID shows when you boot up you should be good. Do you have options to config it?

Clonezilla will actually clone the entire disk and restore all partitions. This is why you can't have an image from a bigger drive and put it onto a smaller drive - while the actual data may fit, the partition tables will exceed the limits available on the smaller disk and it will error out.

Satsumomo

Ok just tried this and unfortunately Clonezilla doesn't pick up the Intel Raid

I guess it's considered software raid? Even though the Windows installation picks it up instantly with no drivers or anything needed.

rockmonkey

uean wrote:

Yes if the Intel RAID shows when you boot up you should be good. Do you have options to config it?

Clonezilla will actually clone the entire disk and restore all partitions. This is why you can't have an image from a bigger drive and put it onto a smaller drive - while the actual data may fit, the partition tables will exceed the limits available on the smaller disk and it will error out.

I was just using clonezilla last week and it has an option for creating an image of a single partition or the entire disk, or did I miss something? So you have an 80 gig partition on a 1.5 tb drive you clone and image onto a 500 gig drive then you would have the remainer of the 500gig drive left as unallocated data that you could then partition however you wish.
I'm not super familiar with clonezilla, just kind of used it once or twice and haven't bothered learning the ins and outs.

Djeet

A lot of the consumer RAID implementations (non-200$+ controller hardware) are not true "hardware RAID" but if you built the partition in a pre-boot/option-ROM/BIOS environment I think you can do what you are trying to do. Which version of Acronis do you have (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/comparison.html or http://kb.acronis.com/content/2768)? Last time I checked any free downloads/trials have limitations that weren't present a couple years ago (e.g. Acronis True Image Home 2012 lacks "clone disk" option during free trial). Also 2011 requires an add-on to clone to different hardware.

Satsumomo

Thank you very much for the feedback guys, in the end I gave up and reinstalled my system fresh. It's annoying that my W7 key always needs me to call MS in order to activate :P

uean

Sorry it wasn't recognized. I'll admit I only really have exposure to big dollar/enterprise RAID equipment so I never even thought it would be an issue. Glad you got it sorted.

When you say Clonezilla didn't see the RAID, are you saying that Clonezilla saw two HDDs instead of one? That board should do the RAID without any problem. How did you configure it? If the BIOS sees it, Clonezilla should see it.

No need to answer as you've solved your issue... I'm just curious why it didn't work.

Satsumomo

Clonezilla wouldn't pick them up at all. I connected another 500GB I use as an external drive, and well both that drive and the 1.5TB would show up, but not the array or the individual disks.

lapwlover

i don't know if you solve you problem or not, i just want to talk about my experience. Need bootable disk. Then you can clone your system disk to the bigger one with todo bakcup, one clone tool i found from one forum. Then you can create RAID-0.
In the same way, you can clone it back. I just clone my disk to the new hardware, it not disappoint me.
In some way, I think this tool is reliable.
http://www.todo-backup.com/products/features/disk-clone-guide.htm