SATA RAID and drive imaging utilities? (was Norton Ghost - Instantly Makes SATA Raid unbootable?)

Nortons Ghost wont work with Sata Raid? It's not something that I've done
with your motherboard/chipset however I can tell you Ghost most definatly
works on my 2nd PC here using an Asus mobo and the promise Sata raid chip!

CrimsonLiar

Drive Image boots up a Windows 2000 looking kernel that looks near 100% same
as Windows 2000 installer. It gives the opportunity to load via F6 any
drivers you need for any device and it [seems to] use the stock Windows
driver infrastructure to access volumes regardless of bios support. Lets not
forget that a Windows driver runs in native 32 (or lets hope 64 ) bit
addressing mode, operates via any cache that may be estabilshed and is
supportable.

IE it works on an 8KNXP with SATA discs. I have done it too - no drama at
all. It rnus as fast as any file copy does on very large files.

As for bios support. Not too sure. For the bios to be able to boot off a
device it needs to be able to access it. If a controller such as an intel
ICH5R is running in RAID, it installs its own bios extensions to support
basic RAID IO. I would expect these bios extensions to implement the
appropriate BIOS boot support to access these drives. However BIOS support
has limits...

So, yes, it is conceivable - give it a try. But I would bet that if they
don't load SmartDrv or some other caching functionality it will run so
sloooow that it will be a pain.

- Tim




"John Everett" wrote in message
...
******* Operator from Hell; &gt
wrote in message >.. .

Instead of using Ghost....I recommend getting yourself a copy of
BootItNG.
.... BootItNG does not care what kind of drive you are imaging or
booting
from.... My experience on my 8KNXP Ultra has been that it will work
with
all three RAIDs (IDE, SATA, and SCSI).... [P]artition images... can be
pulled from the CD Rom either using the installed version of BootIt
or the boot disk from BootIt.

Is this accurate the SATA RAID?

The BootIt NG FAQ says:
Q: Will BootIt NG work with my RAID or ATA66/100/etc controller?
A: Yes as long as the hard drives are mapped in to the BIOS and the BIOS
can
be used to access them.
Q: Will BootIt NG work with my hard drive?
A: For compatibility reasons, BootIt NG uses the BIOS to access the hard
drives. As long as there is a working BIOS interface available for the
drive, BootIt NG will be able to access it.
-- http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/faq.html

I thought that native SATA Ports are NOT supported by BIOS mapping -- and
that to use SATA RAID on the 8KNXP's, you have to set the SATA controller
drives to SATA native Port0 & Port1 (rather than re-mapped to conventional
IDE drive positions).

Isn't this why the 8KNXP manuals say:
SATA Port0 SATA controller set to SATA port0. As this mode, it support by
WinXP or later OS only.
SATA Port1 SATA controller set to SATA port1. As this mode, it support by
WinXP or later OS only. [sic, natch]

Isn't native SATA only possible in WinXP (and "later") because driver
support is require to access the native SATA, rather than relying upon the
BIOS? Wouldn't the 'boot disks' of various drive imaging utilities NOT
count as "WinXP or later OS"?

On an 8KNXP Ultra system, have you actually booted from a utility boot
disk
and had read/write access to a SATA RAID volume? Is there any drive
imaging
utility that does/can/will provide this functionality?

If no imaging utility does/can/will provide this functionality, what sort
of
disaster recovery plan is best on a SATA RAID system? Are we back to tape
backups and reinstalling a minimal OS and then restoring from tape?

Tia for any info,
John

Thanks to your pointer, and some research, I've found out that Drive Image 7
/ V2i Protector use the Windows PE (Pre-installation Environment) for their
'boot disk' Power Quest Recovery Environment (PQRE). WinPE is the actual
W2K, XP, 2K3 installer platform.

Also, with a little noodling, I found out that not only can you use the F6
key at startup to manually add a mass-storage (although not any other type
driver), but you can modify the disk to make it a automatically include, not
only the mass-storage hardware of the 8KNXP, but also the on-board Intel NIC
as well.

Here's the steps I performed to successfully make the Drive Image disk
support the 8KNXP SATA RAID and the on-board Intel NIC:

I) Generated an ISO file from the existing CD
II) Edited the ISO file
A) SATA RAID Support
1) Deleted the (unnecessary extra) sub-directories in
\I386\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ADDITIONAL_OEM\
2) Created a sub-directory called INTEL_ICH5R in
\I386\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ADDITIONAL_OEM\
3) Copied the ICH5R XP boot drivers -- IASTORE.CAT, IASTOR.INF, IASTOR.SYS,
AND TXTSETUP.OEM -- to the new
\I386\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ADDITIONAL_OEM\INTEL_ICH5R sub-directory
4) Edited the OemDriverDirs= line in \I386\SYSTEM32\WINPEOEM.SIF to read
OemDriverDirs=INTEL_ICH5R
B) On-board Intel NIC
1) Using the latest on-board Intel NIC drivers, replaced the E1000325.INF in
\I386\INF
2) Using the latest on-board Intel NIC drivers, copied the E1000325.CAT to
\I386\INF
3) Using the latest on-board Intel NIC drivers, replaced the E1000MSG.DLL in
\I386\SYSTEM32
4) Using the latest on-board Intel NIC drivers, replaced the E1000325.DIN in
\I386\SYSTEM32
5) Using the latest on-board Intel NIC drivers, replaced the INTELNIC.DLL in
\I386\SYSTEM32
6) Using the latest on-board Intel NIC drivers, replaced the PROUNSTL.EXE in
\I386\SYSTEM32
7) Using the latest on-board Intel NIC drivers, replaced the E1000325.SYS in
\I386\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS
III) Burned the edited ISO as an image to a new (bootable) CDR

The end result was a new boot CD which automatically included the SATA RAID
and the on-board Intel NIC drivers. I suppose one could just as easily add
support for the GigaRAID and/or the 8KNXP-Ultra SCSI XP boot drivers by
likewise adding driver sub-directories to
\I386\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ADDITIONAL_OEM\ and pointing to them in the
OemDriverDirs= line of the \I386\SYSTEM32\WINPEOEM.SIF file.

John

"Tim" wrote in message
...
Drive Image boots up a Windows 2000 looking kernel that
looks near 100% same as Windows 2000 installer. It gives
the opportunity to load via F6 any drivers you need for any
device...


"John Everett" wrote in message
...
.... what sort of disaster recovery plan is best on a SATA RAID
system?