Z640 Bare metal win 10 install RSTe raid

[Randy78628]

I have successfully installed w10 on my Z640 using the image provided by hp chat.  How do I add this running drive to the raid controller?  No detailed docs come up but I read once adding a drive zaps it.

The system runs very slowly acting disk bound, as it did with W7.  I think it’s running without the RSTe and that I need to use the raid controller.

Also, can an image from the non-raid running drive I have be restored to a new raid volume?

Thanks

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

all raid controllers when configuring a new raid Array write low level metadata to the drive(s) this step is indeed destructive and erases any previous information note that you need a physical controller in order to be able to boot from a array. while the z640 has a physical onboard LSI raid chip, it's really only limited to raid /0/1 modes trying to use raid 5 makes it very slow as the onboard raid chip lacks cache ram and battery backup

i recomend looking into a adaptec ASR-71605 controller which can be found on ebay for under 100.00 that includes the backup module and super cap battery the 7 series will do true Raid modes AND ALSO JBOD, just like the motherboards onboard LSI chip, but the adapted 7 series card is much much faster

your options are as follows,

1. create new array, (destroys existing data) reload OS from scratch onto new array

2. create new array, then image existing OS from another single drive onto the new array (keep single drive OS for restores)

    note:  you will need to preload the 7 series raid driver onto the existing single drive OS image before imaging to the array

Acronis is one such company that makes imaging software that can restore to a array

[Randy78628]

Thank you for your excellent answer.

I'm afraid to ask, can a "Win7 Backup & Restore" image restore back to a new raid volume?  My Win 10 upgrade efforts have been quite a struggle and I ran into multiple issures concerning UEFI, GPT and restores, which failed.

Since I had trouble before, I'm sure hoping that an image from my running drive will restore into a new raid volume.

Or must I truly obtain the Acronis? I had a crippled version some years ago...

Thanks so much for your efforts for this community.

Randy

[DGroves]

the answer to your backup/restore question is IT DEPENDS ON SEVERAL THINGS

does the backup have the nessary raid controller driver? if not then you must add it to the existing backup

is the raid array the same size (or larger) than the existing drive? (image backups can not restore to a smaller drive)

is the existing backup Legacy or GPT? you can not restore a UEFI/GPT image backup to a legacy system due to bootloader and possible drive size issues you can however usually restore a legacy Bios image to a UEFI based system by configuring the UEFI bios to disable "fastload" and boot security"

legacy is limited to a 2TB Boot drive size, and GPT is unlimited in the size of the boot drive