Ghost Solution Suite

I have a client who's server has a raid 5 array (3 physical drives) that is configured as two logical drives - 12GB and a 65GB. Instead of allowing Windows to create partitions from the whole raid set, the previous admin actually created two logical drives in the Raid 5 array, then created partitions in Windows on each drive (they look like two physical drives to Windows). This is no longer allowed by the latest firmware of the PERC controller, since it is not a good way to do things.

So, I now need to add a drive to the raid 5 array due to space issues. The problem is, that when I add the drive to the machine, I cannot add it to the array - the controller will not let me put a drive into the array when there are two logical drives configured.

My solution will be to create a ghost image of both logical drives, then recreate the raid set with all 4 physical drives (only creating one logical drive this time), then restoring the first image to a partition on the logical drive, and the other image on a second partition.

I hope I have been clear up to this point.

My question is, since I will end up with two ghost images, and a newly created raid set with no operating system, how do I get the images back onto the logical drive and on the correct partition?

Is there another way to do what I want to do?

Hi Jason,

This is a very tricky situation since it involves RAID and a target will have a different configuration. First of all, everything depends on if the RAID controller emulates a physical disk under DOS or not. If not, Ghost will not be able to image it anyway.

I presume that your first drive contains OS and Apps, and second contains data. As far as imaging process is concern, then you can restore the first image using image to Disk and select 12GB (or what ever the size you want for the first partition). Then restore the second image using �Image to partition� to the rest of the disk. But this will not take care of any other Windows or RAID configurations you may have. For example, if you have any boot files in the second disk, you may need to edit Windows configurations manually. You may need to change drive letter assignments if Windows assign different drive letters to new partitions.

Since you work with lot of data, it is safe if you test that scenario (and keep backups) before breaking the RAID since it is very sensitive to configuration changes and it may not be possible to restore once broken.

Krish