Image mounting

[ronnieburns]

Hi guys.

I am currently running a single ssd drive with windows 7 and have acronis 2012.

I want to buy 2 new ssd's and set up RAID. If I make a full backup of my single ssd through acronis will i be able to mount it on to my new RAID array? If so then which acronis backup option is best. I usually just do a full, single backup.

Any help is most welcome.

Thanks.

 

[RealBeast]

I would advise you to get a single larger SSD, you will not notice any performance difference from a RAID 0 SSD pair. Only the benchmarks are better, the real world difference is not.

With True Image I usually do a full disk backup, selecting the entire disk by just checking the box for the whole disk and then do a restore to the new drive.

 

[ronnieburns]

Thanks for the reply.

I will look into a bigger single SSD, but I would still like to know if my backup image from a single SSD can be mounted on to a RAID pair. Will Acronis see the RAID drives as a single drive the way it should and therefor let me mount my backup image on to it?

 

[ss202sl]

Typically when you set up raid, it Initializes(formats) the drives. This removes any information. You would have to take the image, set the raid up, and then apply the image to the raid array.

 

[J_E_D_70]

Might have to have the RAID driver loaded in Windows prior to making the image.

Please double check but Windows used to not be able to TRIM SSDs in a RAID array. Could lead to degraded performance or more maintenance on your part if that's the case.

 

[tripledouce]

there is no way with acronis to load a non-striped OS back up onto a striped array. your going to save yourself alot of headache just re-installing the OS.

 

[ronnieburns]

Is there any other program that can do it? What about windows own backup service or something else?

I really dont wanna reinstall windows because I have a very specific setup with lots of different programs etc that take a long time to not only install but to configure and I mean a long time.

With regard to TRIM. I dont think it's doing anything for my current SSD. It has seen a drop off in speed. I have read that it has pretty poor garbage collection built in and even idling the PC for awhile doesnt help. I have TRIM enabled but from what I have read elsewhere windows doesn't use it for SSD's. But then I am no expert with That side of windows. I am good with hardware and pc building and fixing most windows issues but with disk drives in windows I am not too experienced.

Any more help is very welcome.

 

[RealBeast]

Thanks for the reply.

I will look into a bigger single SSD, but I would still like to know if my backup image from a single SSD can be mounted on to a RAID pair. Will Acronis see the RAID drives as a single drive the way it should and therefor let me mount my backup image on to it?

I have often added another HDD using Windows disk management by extending the OS partition onto a second identical drive that is freshly formatted, just haven't done it with an SSD but I see no difference that would make it not work.

While I have not tried this, here is a step by step to restore a Windows 7 backup to a new RAID 0 array using Windows backup: http://i4memory.com/f78/guide-microsoft-windows-7-system-image-backup-restore-solid-state-disk-ssd-raid-array-25466/

 

[ronnieburns]

Thanks. I will look into that before deciding. Been looking at the OCZ vertex 4 512gb. Its only slightly faster than my current drive but the one I have now is an agility 3 and the garbage collection is pretty poor and my drive speeds have dropped quite a bit over time, even with some idle time also the sandforce drives are not the greatest.

Do you guys really think I am just as well buying a large single drive and maybe I wouldn't really see a decent performance increase in RAID with 2 SSD's anyway?

 

[RealBeast]

You won't see any performance increase with RAIDed SSDs, only the benchmarks are better but the real world difference is not apparent to me. I've tested it out with a number of brands and drive sizes when I had the drives sitting around before builds and not been impressed by any apparent difference. The best thing that I found for using a second drive is as a scratch drive for Adobe Photoshop and Premier.

 

[ronnieburns]

So maybe I should get a big ssd for my main C drive and format my current one to be used for programs like photoshop?

Sounds like less hassle and I will be able to simply clone my current OS from acronis onto the new ssd

 

[RealBeast]

So maybe I should get a big ssd for my main C drive and format my current one to be used for programs like photoshop?

Sounds like less hassle and I will be able to simply clone my current OS from acronis onto the new ssd

If you use Adobe production products, that would make the most sense.

 

[ronnieburns]

I guess even installing a few games or something on the 2nd drive would be a boost too, with one running windows and the other running the game.

Ordered a single 512gb vertex 4 from OCZ anyway so will see how it goes.