Re Install of windows 7 with mirrored Storage drives, any measures required?

[steve_fox]

Hi all, i have reinstalled Windows many MANY times over the years and its nothing more than a pain in the bum for me but the one thing i have never done is reinstall windows on a system running mirrored drives as i only recently started mirroring so can anyone advise please?

My O.S is Win7 Ultimate and i have two mirrored storage drives so 4 drives in total excluding the O.S drive.
I know Win7 is ancient but i like it, i do have Win10 on a Dual Win7/10 boot on a laptop but really dont like the Win10 GUI

How will the mirrored drives be affected on reinstall, will they just appear, will the reinstall break the mirror or even trash data readability, if they can be transferred to a new install, should they be left hooked up for the reinstall or disconnected till the install is complete?

Thanks in advance, Steve.

 

[tech3475]

How have you implemented this? e.g. RAID controller, Storage spaces, etc.

 

[steve_fox]

How have you implemented this? e.g. RAID controller, Storage spaces, etc.

Oh lol, sorry, i forgot to say how they are mirrored!

Mirroring is software, done through Win7's disk management.

 

[Hayato213]

Raid 1 is mirroring , so if you lose one drive, you still have the other drive, but if you reformat the array then you lose your data.

 

[steve_fox]

Raid 1 is mirroring , so if you lose one drive, you still have the other drive, but if you reformat the array then you lose your data.

I wont be doing anything to the mirrored drives, just reinstalling windows on the O.S drive but dont know what will happen to my mirrors when i do that.

Im hoping windows will recognize them and just work but suspect not

 

[Hayato213]

I wont be doing anything to the mirrored drives, just reinstalling windows on the O.S drive but dont know what will happen to my mirrors when i do that.

Im hoping windows will recognize them and just work but suspect not

Don't think you can reinstall windows though as the drives are in an array, you can rebuild, but in order to use one of the drive you need to format, so in result you lose the array.

 

[steve_fox]

Don't think you can reinstall windows though as the drives are in an array, you can rebuild, but in order to use one of the drive you need to format, so in result you lose the array.

How dumb is that, i suspected windows would not play nice which is why im asking and not just reinstalling!

Now the drives are mirrored, are they tied at the hip to each other or is it possible to disconnect all drives for the reinstall then connect 1 of each mirror, get them recognized as lone drives then connect the second drives and rebuild the mirror or have i got to copy everything to another drive and start afresh with the mirrors?

 

[Hayato213]

How dumb is that, i suspected windows would not play nice which is why im asking and not just reinstalling!

Now the drives are mirrored, are they tied at the hip to each other or is it possible to disconnect all drives for the reinstall then connect 1 of each mirror, get them recognized as lone drives then connect the second drives and rebuild the mirror or have i got to copy everything to another drive and start afresh with the mirrors?

They are tied to each other as they are in an array, if you lose a drive you can rebuild the array, that in general that is how raid work, for example if you use two raid 0 drive, if you lose one drive, you lose all your data, atleast you are lucky that you are using raid 1. Reformatting one of the drive count as breaking up the array.

 

[Stone_Wings]

If visuals/GUI is all you're keeping Win 7 for, you can make 10 look/feel near identical. I did it for years.

 

[steve_fox]

They are tied to each other as they are in an array, if you lose a drive you can rebuild the array, that in general how raid work, for example if you use two raid 0 drive, if you lose one drive, you lose all your data, atleast you are lucky that you are using raid 1. Reformatting one of the drive count as breaking up the array.

now im confused, will a Fresh windows 7 install accept an array complete or in broken form from a preveious install?

 

[steve_fox]

If visuals/GUI is all you're keeping Win 7 for, you can make 10 look/feel near identical. I did it for years.

yes, thats the reason, i hate the way win 10 works!

 

[Hayato213]

now im confused, will a Fresh windows 7 install accept an array complete or in broken form from a preveious install?

So for example if you windows 7 installed already on raid 1, but if you want to install windows 7 again on one of the two drives you would have to reformat, end up breaking the array causing you to lose the data, it is diferent than one drive dying and rebuilding.

 

[impeeza]

first you should upgrade your Win 7 to any other OS (11 recommended) if you do not touch anything on the mirrored disk nothing will get lost, all the information is stored on disks so you don't need do more than enable the disks on the Disk Management and voilá all will be seen like before.

 

[impeeza]

but if your installation of Windows in on a volume inside the RAID disks, the thinks could get messy because the installation wizard could change the disks.

 

[Stone_Wings]

yes, thats the reason, i hate the way win 10 works!

How so? Can you elaborate more? You can have the Win 7 quick launch, taskbar, start menu, etc. in Win10. Imo there's really no need to keep Win 7. Unnecessarily taking up space and an unnecessary dual boot.

 

[steve_fox]

So for example if you windows 7 installed already on raid 1, but if you want to install windows 7 again on one of the two drives you would have to reformat, end up breaking the array causing you to lose the data, it is diferent than one drive dying and rebuilding.

My O.S drive is not mirrored, just my storage, i dont want to install on my mirrors, i just want to migrate the mirrors to my new O.S install which will be on its own independent drive.

 

[steve_fox]

but if your installation of Windows in on a volume inside the RAID disks, the thinks could get messy because the installation wizard could change the disks.

O.S is on non Mirrored drive, just my storage drives are mirrored.

 

[impeeza]

O.S is on non Mirrored drive, just my storage drives are mirrored.

then you should be fine.

 

[steve_fox]

then you should be fine.

As in i can reinstall and keep my mirrors intact or at least the data on all drives and have to re mirror?

I planned on doing the reinstall with only the O.S drive connected for the install and connecting the storage drives after the install was complete.

i have 700gb of data currently on the two mirrors, i can back them up to a 2tb drive if i have too but thats a several hour transfer as a few GB is made up of several hundred thousand files of 6.2kb, those take forever to transfer and i would like to avoid that same massive transfer to put the data back again if i can!

 

[impeeza]

yo don't need to "remirror" when windows start ti read the disk, detect the mirror and load with no problem.