The problem:
My everyday PC was an older Lenovo with a single 1TB Hard Disk running Windows 10. I have a backup regime in place, but was concerned that my recent email history was at risk if the HDD failed.
The Solution:
It was time to upgrade my PC, and I had decided to build a Mini-ITX system which would take up less space in the office. I had purchased an Asus ROG STRIX B550-I Gaming motherboard, and knew that it supported RAID 1 over it’s 2 m.2 NVME slots. My plan was to set up the RAID array in the motherboard BIOS configuration, connect my old 1TB HDD then use Clonezilla to copy everything from the HDD to the array.
Unfortunately, on booting into Clonezilla via a USB drive, I found it was unable to see the RAID array. Clonezilla didn’t have the necessary drivers to work with the array.
It was difficult to find any helpful advice via Google on how I should proceed. Quite a few posts suggested a Windows system should never boot from a RAID array. I don’t agree (unless it’s RAID 0, so would be susceptible to a single drive failure). If one of my RAID 1 drives should fail, I should still be able to boot and use the system while the RAID management software would be rebuilding the array in the background with a a newly installed replacement drive (again – always keep a separate backup – RAID is not backup).
The Real Solution
Mainly, the answer is to use a Windows based cloning tool, and to copy the the necessary RAID drivers onto the old system, before cloning. The Windows 10 AMD RAID drivers were available from the ASUS website (follow link above). While on the ASUS website, download any other firmware and drivers suitable for the new motherboard and CPU (LAN driver, WiFi drivers, Sound drivers, etc).
I chose Macrium Reflect to copy the drive as it runs in Windows and has a 30 day free trial version (which worked fine for this purpose).
So, the process was:
- On the original system, download both the AMD RAID drivers and Macrium Free.
- As a precaution, I used Clonezilla on the original system and copied the 1TB HDD to a spare 1TB HDD that I had available. Copies after this were made from the 1TB HDD backup – so I still had the original in case of any disaster.
- I installed the copied 1TB HDD into the B550-I Gaming, and the 2 x m.2 NVME drives were already configured in BIOS as a RAID-1 array.
- Next, booted the B550-I Gaming system from the copied 1TB HDD.
- Once into Windows, installed the AMD RAID drivers. The went to the Windows Disk management app (via Computer management) and could see both the 1TB HDD and the 1TB RAID-1 Array.
- Installed Macrium Reflect which was able to clone all of the contents from the 1TB HDD to the NVME RAID-1 array.
- Once the cloning was completed, shut down the PC.
- Remove the 1TB HDD.
- On starting the PC, everything ran perfectly, booting straight into Windows from the NVME RAID array.
- Only final tasks were to install those extra drivers mentioned above (didn’t have ethernet connectivity until appropriate new drivers were installed).
- In my case, the AMD RAIDXpert2 was available from the Microsoft Store for free. Once installed, I can monitor the state of the RAID-1 array from inside Windows.