How to Repartition a Hardware RAID1 Array?

Hi,
I built a new system about a year ago, including a legit copy of XP pro and
well-equipped ASUS A8V MB. To complete the upgrade, I built a hardware IDE
RAID 1 with 2 160G Maxtor HDDs using the promise FastTrak controller and
firmware.
Now for my mistake - I partitioned this drive to allow for easy reinstall of
the OS, into 4 parts - OS, Installables, SW, and Data at 8, 50, 13, and 79
GB, respectively.
In spite of my best efforts to keep all SW installations on the SW drive, Im
now at 98% occupancy of the OS drive and must repartition it. I can find no
written information on what software to buy and/or what to do to make this
process have more than a 20% likelyhood of completing successfully without
data loss. I've tried XP internal features and Acronis Partition Expert to
no avail. I tried breaking the mirror by removing power from one drive of
the pair, but no boot.
Is anybody out there a real RAID expert for a configuration like this???
--
Bob in Florida

Partition Magic or any equal will do. Since the mirror is built and handled
at the hardware level it is invisible to the operating system and these
utilities. BTW there is no advantage to installing software to a partition
separate from the operating system.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Bob J." wrote:
| Hi,
| I built a new system about a year ago, including a legit copy of XP pro
and
| well-equipped ASUS A8V MB. To complete the upgrade, I built a hardware
IDE
| RAID 1 with 2 160G Maxtor HDDs using the promise FastTrak controller and
| firmware.
| Now for my mistake - I partitioned this drive to allow for easy reinstall
of
| the OS, into 4 parts - OS, Installables, SW, and Data at 8, 50, 13, and 79
| GB, respectively.
| In spite of my best efforts to keep all SW installations on the SW drive,
Im
| now at 98% occupancy of the OS drive and must repartition it. I can find
no
| written information on what software to buy and/or what to do to make this
| process have more than a 20% likelyhood of completing successfully without
| data loss. I've tried XP internal features and Acronis Partition Expert
to
| no avail. I tried breaking the mirror by removing power from one drive of
| the pair, but no boot.
| Is anybody out there a real RAID expert for a configuration like this???
| --
| Bob in Florida

--
Bob in Florida


"Dave Patrick" wrote:

Partition Magic or any equal will do. Since the mirror is built and handled
at the hardware level it is invisible to the operating system and these
utilities. BTW there is no advantage to installing software to a partition
separate from the operating system.

It's been many years since I used PM, so decided to try Acronis because it's
available at work - bad choice, perhaps. Does PM require CD or floppy boot,
or does it do all under XP?
The array configuration looks a little strange to me - When I goe to XP Disk
Management, the OS (boot?) partition and the SW partition show up as a
logical drives, and the other two are "primary". Some of the menu choices
are grayed out on the OS and SW, too.
Are there any disadvantages to separate partitions? (except, of course for
the extra complexity). My original intent was to limit the OS partition size
while allowing lots of space for SW installs to expand while still allowing
for easy OS format and reinstall if required.
I keep hoping that MS will enable that a clean OS reinstall will not
necessitate reinstall of all software. On the other hand, it appears that XP
(for me, at least) is solid enough that this may now be an academic issue.
It certainly wasn't so for 98, nor for my son-in-law, who got so fed up with
XP that he's now in the Apple camp.
--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Bob J." wrote:
| Hi,
| I built a new system about a year ago, including a legit copy of XP pro
and
| well-equipped ASUS A8V MB. To complete the upgrade, I built a hardware
IDE
| RAID 1 with 2 160G Maxtor HDDs using the promise FastTrak controller and
| firmware.
| Now for my mistake - I partitioned this drive to allow for easy reinstall
of
| the OS, into 4 parts - OS, Installables, SW, and Data at 8, 50, 13, and 79
| GB, respectively.
| In spite of my best efforts to keep all SW installations on the SW drive,
Im
| now at 98% occupancy of the OS drive and must repartition it. I can find
no
| written information on what software to buy and/or what to do to make this
| process have more than a 20% likelyhood of completing successfully without
| data loss. I've tried XP internal features and Acronis Partition Expert
to
| no avail. I tried breaking the mirror by removing power from one drive of
| the pair, but no boot.
| Is anybody out there a real RAID expert for a configuration like this???
| --
| Bob in Florida

"Bob J." wrote:
| It's been many years since I used PM, so decided to try Acronis because
it's
| available at work - bad choice, perhaps. Does PM require CD or floppy
boot,
| or does it do all under XP?
* I've never used acronis but in either case you'll need to do the floppy
(or CD-Rom) boot. You wouldn't be allowed to resize the operating system
partition while the OS is running. You'll need to shrink and or move one of
the others in order to make room to expand the OS partition.


| The array configuration looks a little strange to me - When I goe to XP
Disk
| Management, the OS (boot?) partition and the SW partition show up as a
| logical drives, and the other two are "primary". Some of the menu choices
| are grayed out on the OS and SW, too.
* Note that Microsoft defines the boot partition for the partition where the
operating system is installed, while the system partition is the first
primary active partition (where the boot sector resides) The system
partition can also be the boot partition for one operating system. Sounds
like either the 'Installables' or 'Data' partition is the system partition.


| Are there any disadvantages to separate partitions? (except, of course for
| the extra complexity). My original intent was to limit the OS partition
size
| while allowing lots of space for SW installs to expand while still
allowing
| for easy OS format and reinstall if required.
* Generally speaking it's advisable to create a suitably sized parition for
the operating system and software and then, depending on personal
preference, have one or more data partitions.



--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Dave Patrick" wrote:

snip

BTW there is no advantage to installing software to a partition
separate from the operating system.

There is if you are booting multiple operating systems, as this allows
you to have only one copy of the program files on the hard drive.

A few years ago I had three versions of Windows (XP, Me, and 98)
installed on a 17 gb hard drive. In order to conserve disk space I
had a separate partition for programs. It worked very well.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

I'm glad it worked for you but I'd never recommend this especially with
different operating system versions.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Ron Martell" wrote:
| There is if you are booting multiple operating systems, as this allows
| you to have only one copy of the program files on the hard drive.
|
| A few years ago I had three versions of Windows (XP, Me, and 98)
| installed on a 17 gb hard drive. In order to conserve disk space I
| had a separate partition for programs. It worked very well.
|
| Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
| --
| Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
| On-Line Help Computer Service
| http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"Dave Patrick" wrote:

I'm glad it worked for you but I'd never recommend this especially with
different operating system versions.

Why not?

Each application was installed 3 times - once for each operating
system, and the registry entries etc were in the operating system
partition, not the application programs.

In order to ensure that there were no drive letter conflicts I used a
3rd party boot mananger (Boot Magic) and configured it so that the
non-booting operating system partitions were hidden and therefore no
matter which O/S I booted the operating system was always on drive C:,
the application programs were on drive D:, and my data files were
always on drive E:. Worked like a charm, until I upgraded to a larger
hard drive and decided that I no longer needed to have Windows Me or
Windows 98 always available.

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

Most people probably wouldn't be using a 3rd party boot manager. Not all
application installs use the same set of installation files (especially
across hybrid and 32 bit systems). As I said I'm glad it worked for you but
I would never recommend this to anyone and with respect to this thread the
concept doesn't apply.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Ron Martell" wrote:
| Why not?
|
| Each application was installed 3 times - once for each operating
| system, and the registry entries etc were in the operating system
| partition, not the application programs.
|
| In order to ensure that there were no drive letter conflicts I used a
| 3rd party boot mananger (Boot Magic) and configured it so that the
| non-booting operating system partitions were hidden and therefore no
| matter which O/S I booted the operating system was always on drive C:,
| the application programs were on drive D:, and my data files were
| always on drive E:. Worked like a charm, until I upgraded to a larger
| hard drive and decided that I no longer needed to have Windows Me or
| Windows 98 always available.
|
| Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
| --
| Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
| On-Line Help Computer Service
| http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

I just downloaded a trial copy of PowerQuest PartitionMagic 8.0 from the fine
folks at Soft32. This appears to be the same thing as Symantec
PartitionMagic 8.0, but I can't be positive. The nice manual that came with
the download says it only supports hardware RAID 0 and RAID 5 configurations.
Seems to me that if it supports RAID 5 it should support RAID 1 also, but it
sure would be nice if they blew the big bucks for the few extra words so we
could know before we buy and go messing around with all our data. Any
comments before I try it?
--
Bob in Florida


"Dave Patrick" wrote:

Partition Magic or any equal will do. Since the mirror is built and handled
at the hardware level it is invisible to the operating system and these
utilities. BTW there is no advantage to installing software to a partition
separate from the operating system.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Bob J." wrote:
| Hi,
| I built a new system about a year ago, including a legit copy of XP pro
and
| well-equipped ASUS A8V MB. To complete the upgrade, I built a hardware
IDE
| RAID 1 with 2 160G Maxtor HDDs using the promise FastTrak controller and
| firmware.
| Now for my mistake - I partitioned this drive to allow for easy reinstall
of
| the OS, into 4 parts - OS, Installables, SW, and Data at 8, 50, 13, and 79
| GB, respectively.
| In spite of my best efforts to keep all SW installations on the SW drive,
Im
| now at 98% occupancy of the OS drive and must repartition it. I can find
no
| written information on what software to buy and/or what to do to make this
| process have more than a 20% likelyhood of completing successfully without
| data loss. I've tried XP internal features and Acronis Partition Expert
to
| no avail. I tried breaking the mirror by removing power from one drive of
| the pair, but no boot.
| Is anybody out there a real RAID expert for a configuration like this???
| --
| Bob in Florida

My old version of PM6 doesn't have that limitation.

--

Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

"Bob J." wrote:
|I just downloaded a trial copy of PowerQuest PartitionMagic 8.0 from the
fine
| folks at Soft32. This appears to be the same thing as Symantec
| PartitionMagic 8.0, but I can't be positive. The nice manual that came
with
| the download says it only supports hardware RAID 0 and RAID 5
configurations.
| Seems to me that if it supports RAID 5 it should support RAID 1 also, but
it
| sure would be nice if they blew the big bucks for the few extra words so
we
| could know before we buy and go messing around with all our data. Any
| comments before I try it?
| --
| Bob in Florida