Windows 10: New Windows install on SSD - Raid HDD Question

Hi,

I had an issue with my boot drive in Windows 10 which ultimately resulted in me having to format and re-install windows on my SSD.

Before doing so I unplugged my 3 HDD which are configured in a RAID configuration. Because the OS was on the SSD, I didnt want to have any risk of losing my data from my HDDs, hence remvoing these before formating the SSD and reinstalling Windows 10.


Windows 10 is now fully operational, but I havent installed my HDDs yet.

The question I have – can I simply plug my HDDs and Windows will recodgnise they are part of a RAID setup, or do I need to do some configuration on Windows to recognise the HDDs? I dont want to run the risk of losing any of the data on the HDDs, hence I havent plugged these in yet until I know how to go about it.

Thanks for your help

:)

 

HDD to new SSD Question

I'm going to upgrade my laptop with a SSD along side my HDD which currently has windows 10 on it, or course. My question is, is it possible to move that version of windows 10 on the new SSD and boot it from there or do I just have to run a clean version
from the SSD?

 

Windows 10 on HDD to a new SSD

I have recently replaced the 500 GB HDD in my laptop running Windows 10 with a 480 GB SSD. The laptop was fully configured with my applications and other settings. The steps I took were as follows:

1) Shrink the C: drive so it was significantly smaller than the SSD (by at least 100 GB) using the Disk Management tools in W10.

2) Copy all the files from D: onto an external HDD.

3) Download Ubuntu Linux and burn on to a DVD.

4) Download Windows 10 from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 and burn this on to a DVD.

5) Close down and boot the laptop from the Ubuntu DVD from step 3 (I used a USB DVD rewriter).

6) Plug in the external HDD.

7) Open a Linux terminal and cd to the external HDD.

8) Copy the C: partition to the external HDD using a command such as:

dd bs=1024k if=/dev/sda1 of=C-drive

where sda1 is adjusted to point to the correct partition.

9) Close down and remove the external HDD.

10) Remove the HDD and replace with the SSD.

11) Perform a clean install Windows 10 from the DVD from step 4. Deleting all partitions from the SSD if it has had any created on it. When it asked for the product key, there was an option to enter it later. Make sure that the C: drive that is created is
the same size or bigger than the C: drive was on the HDD.

12) Repeat steps 5, 6 and 7 then run the command

dd bs=1024k if=C-drive of=/dev/sda4

With the clean install of W10 64bit, sda4 was the C: drive on the SSD after the installation.

13) Reboot from the SSD. The first couple of times my laptop reported errors and went into repair and diagnostic cycles. The last one said something like Reboot or Go to further tools. I cannot remember the exact messages but the meaning was as I have described.
I rebooted and Windows 10 came up and ran perfectly.

14) With the SSD working I shrank the C: drive a few GB to make sure the physical space was the same size as the actual filesystem.

15) Create a D: format it and copy all the saved files on to the new D: from the external HDD.

Job done. All my applications worked perfectly and the laptop connected to my wireless network without needing the pass phrase re-entering. I had tried several other ways of cloning the HDD to the SSD, but as the SSD was 20 GB smaller this was the only way
I managed to get it to work.

I hope this helps others to make the HDD to SSD transition.

 

RAID 0 SSD Windows 10 Disk Read Error

I bought two new SSDs to be used in a RAID 0 configuration with a Dell 9020 under Windows 10.

Before the drives I arrived I configured two old HDDs in RAID 0 and installed Windows 10 as a clean install. This worked perfectly.

Once the new SSDs arrived I configured these in RAID 0 and started a clean install. Windows correctly identified the disk with the correct capacity and the install completed without issue.

When the computer restarts I got a "A disk read error occurred" error.

If I boot from the installation media to a command prompt I can see that the Windows files have been correctly installed to the C drive of the RAID 0 array.

I try fixing the MBR but this does not solve the issue.

I also tried loading the RAID drive during Windows install but this made no difference, and if it was the driver causing the issue it would not have worked with my old HDDs.

If I open diskpart I see that the drive is not marked as boot, which it is when I check these details on the old HDDs in RAID0.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks