Thank you paperdoc.
The T3500 is running Win7 64 bit and just updated BIOS and the Intel Raid so that 4T drives would be OK (I think?).
windows does show only DRIVE0 a reserved partition and a C partition which is 85% full - hence my current need to increase HDD size.
Acronis only talk of creating a BACKUP of the DISC 0 - I presume only one backup?
If I restore this (less than 1T) onto the new 4T dive and expand the C partition, - I am surely almost there? The 4T drive would be in a USB caddy for the Restore I am supposing.
If I remove BOTH 1T drives from the PC, and replace one of them with the new 4T backup will the machine boot from that do you know?
Simply adding the second 4T I assume will tell the Raid controller that the slave drive is out of sync and it will faithfully copy from my first physical drive to the second?
Or is this wishful thinking?
Reading the Acronis literature, I am starting to wonder as to the real benefit of raid 1 anyway - I only need it for security in event of HDD failure, so maybe normal PC architecture with Acronis making a full image backup onto a second 4T dive (but NOT Raid) might be a more understandable and logical solution?
Thanks
Alan
Paperdoc said:
Before you go further, you should read more and understand what RAID means. There are many RAID types, each very different from the rest. From your post I suspect you believe that you have, originally, two 1TB HDD's in a RAID1 array. In that case, although your mobo will correctly tell you that you have two HDD units attached, Windows will see them as ONE "drive" with a capacity of 1 TB, because the mobo is managing the two units as one RAID1 storage resource.
Now, next you want to migrate all your stuff to a new RAID1 array composed of a pair of 4 TB HDD units. The common way to migrate from old HDD to new larger HDD is by cloning. BUT making a clone of a pair of HDD's in a RAID1 array is NOT as simple as making a clone of one stand-alone unit to another. So I'm not surprised that the freebie Acronis True Image WD Edition does not do this for you. But you say that the full Arconis utility will.
Your also should realize that you have a further complication. The common way to organize a stand-alone HDD is limited to a max of 2 TB. To use a 4 TB stand-alone unit fully, you must Partition it using a different system known as GPT. This MAY require a little difference in hardware, and most certainly requires that you use a different version of Windows. The only versions of Windows that allow you to use a HDD over 2TB are the 64-bit versions. I cannot be sure, but I expect that this also applies to RAID1 arrays, just as it does to stand-alone (non-RAID) drives. You should check specifically whether Acronis True Image CAN handle such large HDD units in a RAID array, and what that means for the Windows version you need to have installed.
Because making this clone will involve making a complete copy of everything from TWO HDD's to TWO new HDD's, you cannot expect to do this with a single Destination HDD in an external enclosure! I expect that all four HDD units will have to be mounted and connected to the same mobo. Then somehow the new pair of 4TB units will need to be linked as a new RAID array. That MAY be done for you by Acronis, or maybe you must do some preparation yourself using the RAID management utility in your mobo. You MUST read the manual for Acronis True Imaging to find their instructions for how to clone a RAID1 array!
I will call you attention to something I have found in making clones of a SINGLE drive - not a RAIDn array - to a larger unit. The cloning tools I have used suggest making the destination clone copy the SAME SIZE as the original, leaving Unallocated Space on the new larger HDD unit. But they also ASK you to approve this before proceeding. I always do NOT automatically approve the proposal. I use the menu system to change it to use ALL of the space available on the new Destination Unit to create a larger "drive". I have not done this operation in terms of cloning a RAID array, but watch out for that size thing!