I was trying to do a good deed and help an older couple upgrade their Desktop running Windows7 Pro 64 Bit by installing a SSD drive. When I went to Clone the SSD drive
.what I found was that when they purchased their Dell XPS8300
.they had it sent to a PC Tech to start it and tweak it and one of the things he did was to set up a RAID configuration using the Original drive and added a new drive. The RAID is a redundancy configuration (RAID 0 or RAID 1????) which I found out when I spoke to the Tech who made these changes
.but, the tech was not willing to assist us to dump this RAID configuration and put the PC back to Drive in the O Port being the OS and Bootable drive, and the 2nd Drive a standalone
.to save Data to.
Before the couple ordered the SSD drive I did look at My Computer which showed a C:\ drive and no other HDD drives
.showed it as a 640GB Drive . But when I opened the PC to install the SSD drive to Clone it off the c:\ drive
I saw it had 2x650GB Drives. The tech said both drives were a mirror of one another
that is how he configured the RAID configuration...and it was backup configured/ he used the word redundancy.
I went into BOIS, changed the Drive setting from RAID to ATA
.discontented the 2nd drive (connected to Port 1)
thinking since both drives were the same image
.the PC would Boot to Windows off the Drive connected to Port 0
.. That didn't I realizehappen, the PC would not boot to Windows
..it went to the screen asking you to run diagnostics or Continue normally. I ran diagnostics
.it didnt provide any information.
I could Clone the SSD from the HDD connected to Port 0
but it still would Boot to Windows when it was the only drive connected, and the BOIS setting was ATA.
I dont know if there is any benefit to installing the SSD in the RAID configuration
if it would even improve the speed of the PC
over that when the Port 0 device was the HDD
..
What I would really like is to remove RAID
and end up with Port 0 as a HDD; the Bootable drive and Port 1 HDD as a standalone drive to save data
..and somehow
..clone the SSD drive to Boot the PC to Windows and have all the Owners software installed.
I realize I could just set BOIS to ATA, install the SSD drive, load a fresh copy of Windows on it
(obviously disconnecting both RAID HDDs)
.but than I must re-load all Owner installed software.
I do not understand if both RAID HDD are mirrors of one another why when I set BOIS to ATA, disconnected HDD connected to Port 1
.the PC wouldnt boot to Windows
.there is a Bootable sector somewhere in this 2 Drive RAID configuration
..
I Have cloned several SSD drives for myself and other buddies
.. none of those PCs had a RAID configuration
so it was simple, Install the SSD to Motherboard, did some housecleaning, used Cloning software,
.PC Booted to windows and the PCs were running, like they did when the HDD was the Bootable device except, the PCs ran faster
. This Upgrade
.has really thrown me some hurdles. You want to do something good for a friend
..and you really feel badly when you have failed and so far I have
.
Any help will be appreciated
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