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Thread ID: 143699	2017-03-21 02:31:00	Cloning Server RAID1 SATA drive to SATA SSD	Geek4414 (12000)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1433109	2017-03-21 23:15:00	make image (save image to USB HD), remove old drives install new drives, setup/initialise raid clone to new 'drive' from image . This assumes its not some sort of software raid , or semi-software raid It is a hardware RAID controller, the problem with cloning to image and back to new SSD is that I still can't guarantee that it will boot which is the problem I am having with the current clone. All the data are there but it just wouldn't boot properly. If I can't get it to work, I won't be ordering the new drives. I cloned to a 256GB SSD I have on hand, the clone appears all successful and the data is there and the boot manager booted up, just that it crash when trying to start the OS. When it did boot up with the RAID1 array connected (HDD showed as C: and SSD as D:), I did a quick benchmark, the speed difference is definitely worth it, the Seq test was 70 to 80MB/s with HDD and 215/193 with SSD. The 4K test which I interrupted as it took too long, was in 0.4 or something like that and the SSD was 42.2MB/s!	Geek4414 (12000)
1433110	2017-03-22 00:04:00	On a ML110 I setup a few years back, the Raid controller was so buggy I had to remove it & use software raid . This was new out of the box ! Could just be a buggy raid card ? Just FYI , dont do a firmware update on the raid card unless you are still able to get Bios/firmware updates for the server itself. found out that out the hard way :-) That might be an option though, upgrade the ML110 firmware (first), then the raid controller firmware , you may need to have current warranty or carepack to get firmware though	1101 (13337)
1433111	2017-03-22 01:07:00	On a ML110 I setup a few years back, the Raid controller was so buggy I had to remove it & use software raid . This was new out of the box ! Could just be a buggy raid card ? Just FYI , dont do a firmware update on the raid card unless you are still able to get Bios/firmware updates for the server itself. found out that out the hard way :-) That might be an option though, upgrade the ML110 firmware (first), then the raid controller firmware , you may need to have current warranty or carepack to get firmware though Thanks for the tip, will have a go again cloning with Active Image this evening. I shall look into upgrading the firmware of the server first as well before I do anything else. We don't have CarePack for it, its probably around 8+ years old. Trying to minimise spending too much on it, as the system may go to the cloud in the not too distant future, hence I don't want to go the full hog and upgrade the whole server.	Geek4414 (12000)
1433112	2017-03-22 02:38:00	I know this isn't much help, but from my experience, it should 'just work', barring some sort of hardware incompatibility (which isn't out of the question). It sounds to me more like the cloning software is stuffing up the bootloader. I haven't read right through the thread, but just confirming the drive you are cloning to has the same setup as the current drives (either MBR or GPT). You could also put the OS in safe boot/minimal mode before cloning, and see if it will then boot from a SATA port that is not part of that RAID card. I've found it's often easier to clone the RAID to a single drive outside of any RAID, then setup your new RAID from scratch with the new drives, then clone back to the RAID you've just created. The other benefit there is you can muck around with that clone as much as you want, and if it all gets ballsed up, no issues as you still have the original. That's all probably been covered, but thought it would be worth posting quickly just in case. Good luck.	wratterus (105)
1433113	2017-03-22 05:04:00	I know this isn't much help, but from my experience, it should 'just work', barring some sort of hardware incompatibility (which isn't out of the question). It sounds to me more like the cloning software is stuffing up the bootloader. I haven't read right through the thread, but just confirming the drive you are cloning to has the same setup as the current drives (either MBR or GPT). You could also put the OS in safe boot/minimal mode before cloning, and see if it will then boot from a SATA port that is not part of that RAID card. I've found it's often easier to clone the RAID to a single drive outside of any RAID, then setup your new RAID from scratch with the new drives, then clone back to the RAID you've just created. The other benefit there is you can muck around with that clone as much as you want, and if it all gets ballsed up, no issues as you still have the original. That's all probably been covered, but thought it would be worth posting quickly just in case. Good luck. The SSD is connected to SATA (stole the connection from the DVD drive, as I didn't bring a SATA cable with me, duh) separate from the RAID controller. The RAID controller has different kind of connectors with a combined power/data in one plug with two little red wires going back to the controller, similar to the connector in this picture ... 7961 CloneZilla was running off a bootable USB, so the OS isn't running at all. The only thing I am thinking may be that the OS was loading some sort of RAID specific driver and the SSD isn't running through the RAID controller (but it's still in the server) and it goes nuts. The SSD was overwritten completely when I initially did the clone using a cloning dock, and it appear to be totally empty, no visible partition of any sort! So I figure the second cloning using Clonezilla would not have been affected by whatever MBR/GPT that might have existed on the drive? I even tried the cloned SSD on my own PC, changed the SATA port between default and ACHI but made no difference. The instructions I saw regarding cloning with CloneZilla suggested that we "may" need to use Bootrec to fix the boot records. That's another can of worm trying to locate Bootrec, the WINPE ISO I used didn't have a compatible version of bootrec, at the end extracted it off the Windows Server 2008 R2 DVD and copied it to the WinPE boot USB, but that did not make any difference anyway. I then tried bcdedit that was suggested, so I downloaded the WSvr2008R2 ISO and wrote that to USB using Rufus. Bcdedit only worked after I first do the bootrec fix, but didn't make any difference either. The weird thing is the WSvr2008R2 boot USB appear to get corrupted after booting it, have had to rewrite it each time after I used it. >_< The other benefit there is you can muck around with that clone as much as you want, and if it all gets ballsed up, no issues as you still have the original. That's exactly what I am doing, to keep the original RAID array untouched, so I can fall back to them if need be.	Geek4414 (12000)
1433114	2017-03-22 09:15:00	Update ... cloning with Active Image boot USB worked, and only took 28 minutes. It did scandisk upon booting off the cloned SSD (with the RAID drives disconnected), rebooted then I logged in and all working fine. Conclusion is that not all cloning software are created the same. The Active Boot Disk Demo ISO has loads of goodies on it too, including a full File Explorer that looks identical to the normal Windows File Explorer. Interesting thing is that the benchmark I did has changed dramatically When booted off the RAID1 HDD, HDD Seq 82.9/72.97 4K 0/0.32 SSD Seq 262.45/244.76 4K 20.86/63.17 7964 7962 Now that I have booted off the SSD SSD Seq 244.33/39.89 4K 19.38/1.68 7963 That's a HUGE difference, I guess the boot drive is constantly busy with running the OS? It is still way faster on the read operation but the write is worse than the HDD with Seq test, in 4K test, it is still 5x faster than the HDD. Now this test SSD is about 4 years+ old, so hopefully, a new one would be way faster than this. I had a quick look at Server graded SSD, but no one seems to have any in stock. Would a Samsung Pro be good enough? Or does anyone have any suggestions? I guess learning from this exercise, that if I move the DataBase to another SSD, separate from the OS boot drive, it could have a 6 fold speed increase for Seq write operations.	Geek4414 (12000)
1433115	2017-03-22 09:17:00	Raid 1 in the server and it is on a dedicated Raid card? Asking maybe a silly question here but are you sure the Raid controller has SATA drives and not SAS drives? You cannot expect a cloned drive from the server on a dedicated Raid controller card to work or boot on a standard SATA port. Slaved you should see the data but don't expect it to boot. An older HPE server might not support SSD and you will not know until you plug one in. If it was me boot the server to boot media, clone the drive to 2 sata drives (2 just to play safe), shutdown server, remove one old drive and install 3rd new sata drive and start server. On boot enter the Raid controller and check Raid state. If drive detected and rebuild. Leave for a few days checking Raid log for issue and monitor server performance. If working OK shutdown server, change second drive with new one and start drive detected and rebuilding as per the first drive. If it turns to custard it will on the first drive and worst case is format the 2 old drives and clone back the original image.	berryb (99)
1433116	2017-03-22 09:26:00	From how I read this you have booted the server with a cloned image on a SSD on a standard SATA port. Now that you have it booting you need to try and boot the SSD off the Raid controller as you still may find it fails. I don't like this approach though as it could change the Raid configuration. From here I would buy the SSD drives and hope they work by changing as per my other post.	berryb (99)
1433117	2017-03-22 10:20:00	Raid 1 in the server and it is on a dedicated Raid card? Asking maybe a silly question here but are you sure the Raid controller has SATA drives and not SAS drives? You cannot expect a cloned drive from the server on a dedicated Raid controller card to work or boot on a standard SATA port . Slaved you should see the data but don't expect it to boot . An older HPE server might not support SSD and you will not know until you plug one in . If it was me boot the server to boot media, clone the drive to 2 sata drives (2 just to play safe), shutdown server, remove one old drive and install 3rd new sata drive and start server . On boot enter the Raid controller and check Raid state . If drive detected and rebuild . Leave for a few days checking Raid log for issue and monitor server performance . If working OK shutdown server, change second drive with new one and start drive detected and rebuilding as per the first drive . If it turns to custard it will on the first drive and worst case is format the 2 old drives and clone back the original image . Yes, its a dedicated RAID controller with SATA drives, supplied by HP distie . As mention, they have different combo connectors with both power & data in same plug that plugs into SATA drives . They are defintely Sata drives, its on the drive label, although its showing as Logical Scsi in the bench mark drive selection above . Tried to upload a photo but the mobile browser on my phone (walking my dog at the mo) not letting me, just pop up new login window, going in circles . So given that the current HDD is Sata, I think it should work if I drop the cloned SSD in place of the HDD . But may be I will play safe, create a new Raid1 array with the two blank SSDs, then clone the image on it?	Geek4414 (12000)
1433118	2017-03-22 11:09:00	Also check the partition alignment of the SSD, sometimes cloning mucks it up and it hurts performance quite a bit. Happened to me when I cloned windows, managed to fix it but that was ages ago and I forget what tools worked in the end. See if this is helpful lifehacker.com	dugimodo (138)
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