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Explain Like I'm 5: Clone an SSD Drive in Windows so It's Bootable
raindog308
Administrator, Veteran
in Help
I have three identical nvme drives in a Windows 11 PC.
Drive 1 has Windows pre-installed
Drive 2 and Drive 3 are blank
I want to add a RAID-1 mirror to #1. I'm not 100% certain the mobo (MSI PRO Z790-A) will allow me to do this without nuking #1 since it wasn't created as a RAID volume.
So my plan is:
(a) clone drive #1 to drive #3 (as a backup) in such a way that #3 is bit-for-bit the same and bootable
(b) add #2 as a RAID-1 for to #1
(c) if that works, I'm done. If not, create a RAID-1 volume from #1 and #2 and clone #3 to it.
So being not very Windows 11 sophsticated, what is the best way to make a bootable clone? I'm guessing I need some 3rd party software?
Comments
The software that "comes" with new drives is pretty good, you can check your drive manufacturer website to see what software they offer for cloning drives. They all have such a software available because replacing a drive is such a common reason for buying a new one. I like the one Samsung has, runs quick and works like a charm, you end up with two drives both bootable, both exactly the same.
Clonezilla? Or simply boot some kind of Linux and use dd. Disclaimer: I'd try booting the result though. You are dealing with windows after all so unpleasant surprises are to be expected.
Can you touch on how you plan to setup raid1 with 2 drives using windows ?
I could not figure it out last time I tried for my home PC.
In the mobo's BIOS. Some mobos support it, some don't.
Windows does support soft RAID.
Heck, maybe I should do that. The CPU is an i9 so there's plenty of cycles to burn.
Probably also safer that way. If anything goes wrong with your board chances are nothing but that exact raid controller will be able to make sense of your disks and you'd have to try locating an 1:1 replacement of the board. There is no standard for how raid stores data internally.
I used to use Macrium Reflect (truly awesome software btw), but they recently discontinued their Free version. It's still available I think but they'll no longer be supporting it.
@raindog308
You could use clonezila boot ISO, and do a DISK to DISK RAW clone, only downside is that, the destination disk has to be at least 1bit ( I know, stupid
) larger than the source.
Be very careful when selecting source and destination, not to put the wrong drive over the good one.
I highly advise you not to use the MOBO built in Software Raid function, it is totally garbage.
also, a cleaner and easy way is the one mentioned by @ehhthing , Macrium Reflect.
Macrium Reflect will let you clone from a large disk to a smaller one, if the source used data fit's on the destination drive.
Reflect 8 Home Trial is still free, after you make an account at them, no credit card required.
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree
I'd recommend booting linux and just using dd
Your plan is good.
Use clonezilla to clone Windows - it will clone every partition so it will be bootable.
Remove first NVMe to verify that backup drive is bootable, then put it back.
Use BIOS RAID to raid these drives.
I dont recommend Windows built-in RAID or Storage Spaces, I saw it fail way too many times.
Althrough for desktop use I dont really see benefits of RAID1. It would be better to make backups of entire drive, you could use Macrium Reflect for that - backup on external drive will be way more secure than RAID (PSU fail, filesystem error) and you gain recovery option which could be useful if you would delete something by accident or got ransomware.
You can do it in built-in Disk managment tool.
Remove partitions on second drive
Convert disks to dynamic disks
Create new Mirrored partition on second drive, choose first disk as a source
Done
But I dont recommend it, BIOS RAID is less likely to fail.