Move Windows 7 from RAID 0 to Single Disk. How to

Having googled this a plenty and not having found an answer except for a lot of bad info like ‘it can’t be done’ (go figure?), I decided to create this step by step guide. Let me know if it works for other RAID modes, it should as the principle is basically the same.

While it will probably work for most of you, for those it does not and ignored the following warnings regarding backups, tough!

Make sure the data on your windows partition is small enough to fit on the single drive you will be restoring to. This guide assumes you are going to use one of the RAID set drives to restore to. If your going from RAID 0, then you will be restoring to a drive half the size of your RAID array. You only need the DATA size to fit. There is an option in Paragon  to re-size the partition to fit, as long as the data fits!

Check your BIOS Setup and make sure your SATA controller supports either SATA or IDE mode. If the only option you have is RAID or AHCI you will need to follow one of the many online guides to enabling AHCI in windows before you start. If you have AHCI then you probably want to use it, so even if you do have SATA mode you could enable AHCI in your windows first anyway (most likely you would want to use it), but is not required, as long as you have SATA mode AHCI can always be enabled later.

(Thanks NordicDreamer  for pointing this out,, note some BIOS only have RAID, AHCI and IDE, so you would use IDE mode instead of SATA at step 10. If you have both IDE and SATA modes then try SATA, if you BSOD at step 11 then try IDE mode)

Here goes — 

Step 1 ) Download and install the excellent (and free!) Paragon Backup.

Step 2 ) Do a FULL backup using Windows backup. You can store it on a 3rd hard disk, or USB drive or even another computer on your network. I used a networked computer. This is our emergency only, last resort, in case all else fails backup and will not be used if all goes well. Make the recovery disk when prompted. As a further precaution boot into the recovery disk and ensure you can access the backup. Do not skip this step! 

Step 3 ) Now do a FULL backup using Paragon Backup. Same location if you like (this is the one we will restore later). Make sure you backup the MBR, System Reserved (~100MB) and windows partitions. Minimum 3 ‘partitions’. If that’s all you have then fine, just make sure you backup ALL your partitions. The MBR is not, strictly speaking, a partition but you will see it listed.

Step 4 ) Create the Paragon backup/restore CD or USB (I used a USB thumb)

Step 5 ) Boot the Paragon backup/restore disk you created in step 4, and make sure you can access the backup you created in step 3, If you used the network like me, then you will need to set it up using the ‘Configure network’ option. If you cannot access the backup then you will need to move the backup. Just make sure you can access the backup using the Paragon backup/restore disk before you continue.

Step 6 ) Reboot and enter your RAID BIOS, destroy your array, do not create a new array.

Step 7 ) boot the Paragon backup/restore, now restore your backup of windows 7 to disk 0. Make sure to restore the MBR and the ~100MB ‘System Reserved’ partitions as well as the windows partition.

Step 8 ) Once completed you should now be able to boot into windows.

Step 9 ) Open ‘Device Manager’ and look for your RAID driver. Uninstall it. You should be prompted to reboot.

Step 10 ) Enter your Mainboard BIOS setup, Change the sata controller mode from RAID to SATA (you could try AHCI but if it wont boot you will need to follow one of the many guides on enabling AHCI).

[EDIT]  Many newer boards no longer have both IDE and SATA mode. They are both the same for the purposes of this guide so use whichever you have.  If you have both, try SATA and if you BSOD  try IDE  [/EDIT]  27/1/2014

Step 11 ) If all went well your done, windows will install the correct drivers for your sata controller and want to reboot again most likely, but basically that’s it.

How does it work?

The main trick is to get windows to boot on a single drive while it is still using the raid drivers. We trick windows by destroying the array, then restoring to a single drive, while the controller is still in RAID mode. If you try changing to SATA mode without first uninstalling the RAID drivers you will just BSOD during boot, even in safe mode. Once you have got it working you can then move the drive to another controller (after installing the controllers drivers of course) at leisure, should that be your goal.

If you just can’t get it to work, you have 2 fully working backups to play with, so just enable your RAID mode and create the array again, then restore using the Microsoft recovery disk  and backup you created earlier.

Email me using the Contact form and I will try to assist you. I am assuming, seeing as your using RAID, you know where to find things like device manager, windows backup etc.But if you are having problems then drop me a message and I will try to help as best I can, updating this post if required to help make things clearer for everyone.

Please do not bother me if you didn’t create both backups, didn’t make the recovery disks or didn’t check you could access both backups before destroying your array. If your data is not that important to you, just do a fresh install. It is probably what I will tell you anyway.

BaDboD

 

96 thoughts on “Move Windows 7 from RAID 0 to Single Disk. How to”

  1. This works, period. As long as you follow the directions EXACTLY, it will work. I know most sites say it cant be done, but it can.

  2. I’m about to attempt this but I was wondering if I should perform the backup’s BEFORE or AFTER I’ve switched to AHCI in Windows, I only have the options for RAID, AHCI, and IDE in my BIOS, no SATA option. Thanks.

    1. backup BEFORE changing anything.

      Select IDE mode at step 10, you would really like AHCI but most likely you will need to install the AHCI drivers first, or it wont boot.

    2. I’ve been attempting to follow this great guide, but before completing it, I have a concern. Paragon appears to only be backing up 2 of my 3 partitions. I am running RAID 0. I have a 650GB partition of the OS/apps, and a1.2TB partition for “work”. There is also a 450MB “Recovery” partition that Windows created on install. Paragon sees this, and calls it “*”, but does not indicate it’s being backed up., even though all partitions are selected. It simply states it’s backing up 2 partitions, and watching the process seems to support this. I cannot find any way to force it to backup the third partition. Am I missing something here?

    1. Yes, the process is the same due to the same problem with drivers for all windows versions XP and up. Make sure you can access your backups before you go destroying your RAID set though (just in case).

      1. UPDATE : windows 8 does not seem to care. AHCI or SATA/IDE all work for me without problems. Please let me know if RAID ->SATA is still a problem.

  3. Hi! I’m attempting this now with Win 7 raid0 to a single hybrid drive. My question is: after step 6, can I pop in a new OS drive? Or do the original 2 member drives still need to be “in place” (and thus restoring to drive 0)? I can always ghost one to the other directly, but I’m not sure if this will get screwed up. Thanks! – Joel

    1. Hi Dj,
      After step 6, you can indeed insert a new drive. then continue with step 7 etc. You should be able to remove both old drives and install the new drive. The main thing is that your computer still has RAID mode enabled in BIOS at this point so your restored windows should boot nicely, but it is now not on a RAID ‘set’. This is the crucial part, getting your restored windows to boot on a single drive while it still using RAID drivers.

      Let me know how you get on but I see no problems with what your trying to do.

      BaDboD

      1. Dj did give some feedback by email, but never gave his solution. He claimed to have problems with this procedure.

        The many systems I have used this on I have not seen the problems DJ described, but he never responded to my emails.

        If you are an overclocker, please make sure you return all your settings to ‘stock’ before starting.

        1. Of the many systems that you have used this technique on, how many were with the replacement drive being a single hybrid disk?

      2. I followed your steps and similar to the person above, I inserted a new drive. My challenge is with Paragon, when I tried to restore the drive, I got an error about the new drive not having enough space. Old RAID0 set was 1.3TB, with only 400gb of data, Paragon backup is 400gb. Thought my new 1Tb drive would be plenty big enough. Paragon is saying that its trying to restore 1.3TB of data onto a 1Tb drive. Old RAID array is destroyed, of course, so I can’t remake the backup. Ideas? No reply from Paragon tech support yet.

        1. Restore from backups, It is clearly mentioned you should make sure it will fit. Also, note it is mentioned ‘You only need the DATA size to fit. There is an option in Paragon to re-size the partition to fit, as long as the data fits!’

          You could use a Partition Manager to shrink the partitions before starting to ensure they fit on the new drive. Paragon took care of this for me but if you have problems….

          You could also use one of the many open source partition managers (Gparted?) to do the partition resize to ensure your partitions are small enough to fit on the new drive.

          Still, do not ignore the option in Paragon to re-size the partition to fit before going all out resizing partitions

  4. Man, this guide saved my bacon! I had a drive drop out of my RAID5 a few weeks ago. I successfully dumped the RAID5 array using this guide, and am now running on a single disk. I had to modify a few steps (because I installed to a completely new drive) but it worked like a charm. Thanks a million for posting this guide. It’s easy to read/follow, and very clear about why each step is happening. Thanks!

    1. Many thanks for your comment.

      I would appreciate it very much if you could provide your system details so others know this was a safe passage with your configuration.

    2. Glad to hear your bacon is intact Steve.

      Could you please explain what steps exactly you modified?

  5. Can you clone your current raid0 to a new single ssd, then follow step 6 and on but instead of restoring a backup just boot from the new cloned ssd drive?

    1. hmm, good one. As long as you make the backups it is a good idea. Please report back. I don’t see why not, as long as your ‘clone’ software can resize the partitions to fit the destination.

  6. Hi All I just wanted to report my own experience, the steps above seemed to work fine.

    I successfully managed to clone my RAID 0 (2X WD 500GB) onto a single Hitachi 1TB for backup and also boot from it, followed the steps below.

    1. I had to PURCHASE 🙁 acronis true image 2013, looks like the free stuff no longer does cloning or has other features missing). I also purchased the Addon Tools although I think that was pointless and not needed.

    2. Existing system was Intel BIOS Raid 0 (64KB stripe, 2X 500GB WD drives). This raid array was created in bootup bios, not software. I believe if it were software RAID, Acronis cannot clone it since it needs to reboot to clone and carry out tasks prior to Windows booting. This means the Raid controller software would not have loaded at that point.

    Ports:

    SATA0 – WD 500GB
    SATA1 – WD 500GB
    SATA2 – Hitachi 1TB
    SATA3 – Empty
    SATA4 – BIOS disabled.

    SATA0 and SATA comprised the Raid0 array ARRAY_0.

    3. Booted into Windows normally on the bootable RAID0 array (I know thats a dumb idea…real dumb)…

    4. Installed Acronis and rebooted again. 30 day trial version doesn’t contain the CLONE DISK option so I had to take a gamble and buy it up front.

    5. Now under Acronis, chose to CLONE DISK, and selected the source as being the RAID0 array ARRAY_0, and target as the Hitachi 1TB.

    6. Acronis had to reboot to complete this.

    7. When the Acronis hijack boot screen came up and started doing its thing, I unticked RESTART AUTO and SHUTDOWN PC AFTER.

    8. After leaving it for an hour or so, I cam back and saw a completely blank blue screen, and keyboard and mouse did not work. I assumed I had blown my money and raged silently at Acronis.

    9. Physically rebooted into the existing Windows RAID again.

    10. Loaded Acronis up and checked the logs, sure enough it showed some errors about 30 mins ago: “Blocking operation cancelled”.

    11. Despite this, when I browsed the newly created Hitachi image, both partitions that I see on my RAID0, WERE there as well and seemed to be an exact copy of the RAID0 array.

    12. To check if this single Hitachi disk would actually boot, I had to turn off its RAID driver since its no longer RAID. Needed to edit its registry offline.

    13. Loaded regedit and highlighted HKLM, and LOAD HIVE. I chose the file

    HITACHI\windows\system32zconfig\SYSTEM (which is the offline registry of the newly created 1TB single drive clone).

    Choose any name and a new key appears under HKLM, that you can browse.

    14. Under the new key, edited both currentcontrolset1 and currentcontrolset2 and under SYSTEM\SERVOICES\msahci I set STARTUP to 0. Also ensure IASTORV and IASTOR are also set to STARTUP=0. Set ATAPI to STARTUP=3 and PCIIDE to STARTUP=3.

    15. Unload hive which will wirte the changes back.

    16. Rebooted the box and under BIOS, disabled SATA0 and SATA1 so the RAID array is no longer visible. Changed BIOS boot order to make Hitachi the primary boot.

    17. Amazingly it booted up on the single drive. I then made some file changes to confirm it actually worked. At this point Windows showed only the 1 Windows partition, not the other SATA drives. So it genuinly booted on the single drive.

    18 Rebooted again and set BIOS back to having my normal RAID. When it booted up, the Hitachi was now just visible as an additional drive, and I could see the newly created files there, which were not present on the RAID0 partitions, which seemed to prove that it all worked.

    I use paragon HD manager on my other machine and I cannot confirm of paragon is better/worse than Acronis, I have only tried this with acronis 2013.

    Note errors I got in 8 and 10, I may have gotten away with them because I was lucky, please be aware.

    1. Well, my guide did not mention Acronis, but they are a respectable tool. If it worked for you then your plug is good.

      Another note is that you are comfortable with registry edits. This guide was avoiding that quagmire. However many who are so inclined will find your post VERY useful and I thank you.

      A further note: The tools I link to are still free and 100% functional as regards this guide. Please be wary of fictions, I am not subject to them nor do I allow others to inject them. As such your comments suggesting things have changed is erroneous and rebuked. I link to the good ones unashamedly. Please don’t imply by inference.

  7. Please note I am not affiliated with Acronis, and I cannot guarantee it will work…In fact when I got the errors in the log, I clicked them to “See what this means”. It took me to an acronis website “PAGE CANNOT BE DISPLAYED”…so much for technical support…also I have not heard very good things about their tech support online….

  8. Hello. I’m stuck in step 5 because it won’t let me go on. It is requesting a startup disk to be inserted in floppy drive, but I thought USB recovery drive would be enough. Is it necessary to create another boot disk? What else do I need to do?

    1. Hi Isaac,
      USB should be fine. you may need to adjust your bios setting to ensure you can boot from the recovery USB. I am not sure how you are getting a boot from recovery disk option? You should be booting on the USB. Most bios, during POST/boot press F8 or maybe F12 (depending on your BIOS) and you will be given a boot options menu where you can select the USB device to boot from.

  9. I have been trying to follow the instructions to move from a RAID 0 (2 x 500gb Seagate Drives) to a single drive (1 x 500gb Seagate drive). The RAID is set in the BIOS of an ASUS P6T-Deluxe V2 MB. Everything goes well until I reach Step %, when I test the Paragon boot disk and access to the backup. I have backed up to an external USB disk drive and created a boot CD. When I boot from the CD, and choose the \"Normal\" boot, I get nothing but a blinking cursor on the screen. There is no drive activity on the CD. Then I tried \"Safe Mode\" and see a blinking cursor and ………#, but nothing happens. Again, no CD activity. When I use the Reduced Graphics Safe Mode, it starts searching for an image, but finds nothing. Then this is the worst part. When I reboot normally back to the original RAID disks, it cannot find the OS and keeps asking for boot media. At that point, I have to go back and install the Windows backup I made to get the system back up. I can\’t do just a Repair, I have to reload the whole backup. When I boot back up to my restored Windows discs, I get a message \"Reboot and select proper Boot Device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot Device and Press a Key\" At that point it seems to be looking to boot from the CD.I then boot from the CD. When I get to the point of loading the drivers, I see that the System Reserved Partition is C: and the Main Partition is shown as D:. I am not sure why these drive assignments are made. I then load the drivers (ICH10R) from floppy drive A:. In the System Recovery Option window, there is no Operating System showing, even after loading the drivers. Now I did a System Repair and reboot, but get the same message again, Invalid System Disk.

    It looks like I am SOL. Somehow the Paragon backup has altered something and the system cannot boot now. I am not sure what to do at this point except go back to a bare metal install.

    1. Paragon backup does not alter anything. if you want to go back after destroying your RAID then you have to use the backup, thats why you made 2.

      You have to destroy the raid array but leave the BIOS in RAID mode. Your message sounds like you are not booting to the recovery CD, you are selecting something other. It does not matter what else went wrong, if you cant boot the recovery disk and see your backup, you should not have destroyed your array. Please see the bit about “make sure you can access your backups”

      1. I didn’t ever get to the point of destroying the RAID. This happens when I just try to verify that the Paragon CD will boot the system and see the image it created. I think the problem is that somehow when it boots to the CD, it sees the 100mb System Partition as C: and the Rest of the drive as D:. I subsequently made a clone backup using Acronis and when I tried to boot the system back up on the original RAID drives after creating that backup, I got a “Missing NTLDR” message. I was unable to resolve that without running my Windows backup again.

  10. Followup on above:
    Finally got my Windows Backup reinstalled on the original RAID 0 disks. That said, I am exactly where I was a week ago. Not sure what to try next. My setup really did not like the Paragon backup at all. Any other suggestions besides doing a bare metal build would be appreciated.

    1. see step 5, you might need to work out how to boot on your removable media. Not sure how your using RAID though if you don’t know that?

      1. I can get the CD to boot the system, but once into the Paragon program is where it becomes disfunctional. The first two options are unavailable, they just hang up with a flashing cursor and then the option with reduced graphics and safe mode, it cannot find the backup file on the USB drive. When I stop that, remove the CD and restart the system, it will not boot from the original RAID. I have not restored anything at this point, just tried to see if the CD would boot and find the image. After that, the system cannot find the original boot drive.

  11. I can get the CD to boot the system, but once into the Paragon program is where it becomes disfunctional. The first two options are unavailable, they just hang up with a flashing cursor and then the option with reduced graphics and safe mode, it cannot find the backup file on the USB drive. When I stop that, remove the CD and restart the system, it will not boot from the original RAID. I have not restored anything at this point, just tried to see if the CD would boot and find the image. After that, the system cannot find the original boot drive.

  12. After I restored the Windows Backup this last time, after using the Acronis software to create the clone, it appears in looking at the drive (a 1 TB) I cloned, that the file structure is there. There is a 102 mb System Reserved partition and then the larger (931 gb) healthy partition. So now, can I remove my 2 RAID drives or do I have to destroy the RAID before removing them and replacing them with the single drive/

    1. if you are replacing the drives then don’t bother destroying the RAID set, just remove the disks and add the new one. All should be fine.

      1. I was finally able to get the RAID 0 transferred over to one drive. I changed the boot order of the drives in my BIOS and was able to boot to the single drive without problems. My Quickbooks install didn’t like it, but that’s no big issue. I went to the drive in Device Manager and uninstalled the RAID driver then rebooted. I went back to the BIOS and changed the drive to an IDE (I only had choices of IDE, RAID or AHCI). I finished up the boot, only to get a “Missing Operating System” error when Windows started to load. Not sure where to go next. I switched the drive order back to the original 2 disk RAID and the drives from IDE to RAID, and booted back into the original RAID without problem. I enabled AHCI in the Windows registry before doing the copy to the single HD. Should I try AHCI as opposed to IDE?

        1. Good news that you got it working on a single disk. Remember to install any drivers you might need for AHCI and then finally take the controller out of RAID mode altogether (Step 9 onwards)

          1. Finally!!!!! It worked! I booted it up in the RAID config and then did a REGEDIT to set AHCI active, rebooted, changed the BIOS to ACHI, and it came right up. I guess my culprit in the whole thing was the USB cadr reader. After I disabled all of the card slots in Device Manager, the Acronis copy behaved normally. That is a good thing to note for people who have card readers.

            Thanks a bunch for all of your help. I certainly do appreciate it!

  13. In step 2, is this a backup of all files (back up files option) or a system image (back up computer)? I\’m running Vista Ultimate SP2.

    1. it is using Windows backup. So whatever options windows backup provides, files only I think but if it does images and you prefer that then ok.

  14. Hi

    What a brilliant How To and Thread!

    I came here because I want to change my 2 x WD Raptors, currently operating in a RAID 1 setup in Windows 7, to either a single SSD, non-RAID setup or dual SSD in a RAID 1 setup. My Mobo is a rather old P5K Deluxe Wifi but has given marvellous service over the years. I want to change the drives which are as old as the mobo and produce a more responsive and quicker performance. Whilst the ports are only SATA II capable, current SSD’s will work quite nicecly and faster than my HDD’s are doing.

    Having changed several other Laptops to SSD in recent weeks my attention has turned to my main Desktop PC which hosts this mobo within which is an Intel ICH9R controller containing 6 SATA channels. 4 of them operate in RAID 10 (storage) configuration and the other 2 in the RAID 1 config, which I would like to dispense with or change.

    My questions are: –

    1. Can your How To work with RAID 1 ?
    2. I can change the Bios to SATA from RAID at step 10 but that will throw out my other 4 disc RAID configuarion yes? There is no current option in Bios to switch to AHCI – see this: –
    http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&id=20080429114702843&board_id=1&model=P5K

    This would need me to cross-flash the Bios which I really do not want to do and again I am not sure what this would achieve.
    3. So because of this AHCI/Dual RAID setup issue, I have concluded that maybe it would be better simply to go from my existing RAID 1 HDD setup to a RAID 1 SSD setup – am I correct with this logic?
    4. If I am correct, will the transfer to RAID 1 SSD be simply be a case of cloning as if it were a single disc setup?

    Hope you can give me a few pointers please – I think I might be more comfortable with a RAID 1 SSD setup for piece of mind, but will this give rise to other issues? SSD’s have moved on a lot since your How To was written and they have come down in price too. I was thinking of 2 x 250gb in the RAID 1 setup.

    Many many thanks in anticipation of your thoughts and advices.

    1. HI Rozel,
      It should work fine with any RAID mode.
      If you are not disabling RAID mode then you don’t need this thread really. That’s where the problem is, changing from RAID mode to non RAID. You should be able to just clone straight to a new RAID set and it *should* just work . I would still go with all the backups before you start though, just in case.

  15. Wow! – thank you for a brilliantly quick reply 🙂

    That is what I thought too – since writing I now see in Bios that I can actually switch to AHCI from RAID or even go to IDE. I am guessing that if I do switch to AHCI that it will knock out my Storage RAID setup ?

    1. Long discussion deleted as not relevant, Rozel was not disabling RAID mode therefore did not need to follow this guide.

  16. This is a great guide Badbod and just the sort of help I have been looking for.

    I have been gathering hardware/software to hopefully allow me to do a similar change to my system. I have a Dell XPS 435MT that from factory runs 2x500gb WD drives in RAID 0.

    My aim is as follows:

    1 – Create a clone/backup of the current main drive (under 500gb used space more like 420gb IIRC!). On either a 500gb ext USB or onto my new 1tb WD Black drive (this drive I want as my copy of my current Vista Ultimate 64bit install)

    2 – Ensure that the system boots via the single new disk and if possible keep the two original disks as they were (in case of a problem these could be backup? ie. not destroying the array?).

    3 – Then as I need Windows 7 now I have a new SSD drive that I want to fresh install Windows 7 to.

    4 – Finally I would have something like a dual boot system with Windows 7 on SSD and Old Vista (array install) on new 1tb single disk.

    Any tips for this process would be much appreciated as I am slightly out of my depth here!

    Regards, Jonny

    1. Hi JohnnyS,
      You can just disconnect both RAID drives, set BIOS to boot from your new drive and see if it works, or not disconnect the drives but set to boot from the new drive and see if it works. I do like to remove the RAID set to make sure your not getting any false positives, but just disconnecting the drives should work. This guide was a way to use one of the RAID drives as the new boot drive, so of course required destroying the RAID set, hence all the backups.

      As for dual boot, make sure you have your older OS installed/working first, then install the newer OS and it should dual boot fine.

      There are 2 ways to dual boot: (not including UEFI, look elsewhere for that)
      1: use the built in boot manager.
      2: use the BIOS to select which drive to boot from.

      If you want the boot manager, make sure your Vista boots and works, add in the new drive, start setup for the new OS and select the new drive for install. It should auto add to the boot manager and you will get a prompt each boot to select the OS.

      If you prefer to keep them totally isolated, and use your BIOS to choose which drive/OS then unplug or disable your Vista drive during the windows 7 install so it is not visible to windows 7 installer.

      1. Thanks for the reply Badbod,

        I think I am just about there understanding this process there are just a few areas I’m not sure about.

        I will only have space to backup to one usb ext drive so I guess I should use that for the paragon backup?

        With that backup and my original disks will this be enough?

        Before I do anything I have got to install a new video card as mine has been overheating, I am also going to attempt to install a usb 3.0 card to allow faster transfer for windows/paragon backup. Then I should be able to start the process!

        I guess there is no way of me adding in my new 1tb drive and cloning across to that instead of restoring the usb backup to it?

  17. Great write up !

    However I am not getting past step 7

    In Step 6 Choises where \’Delete Raid Volume\’ & \’Reset Disks to none Raid\’ , selected first one
    In Step 7 I only manage to restore system reserved

    During create image all below were selected (Paragon B&R 2014) and verified
    Basic MBR HD0
    -First HD Track
    –MBR
    -system Reserved (E:)
    -Local Disk (c:)

    is this a Paragon image problem ? what am I doing wrong ?

      1. Ok I managed it. Didnt quit clearly see one had to restore in steps .
        All seems to work nicely but confused about the none raid as in Bios I only have option Raid or AHCI.
        Changed what had to for AHCI but when changing in bios from RAID to AHCI windows fails to start

          1. ah, ok, that makes sense,. Your BIOS did not have the fallback modes. Nice catch. Thanks for posting your solution.
            As hardware changes, your input will be invaluable to many others.

            please post the full registry key.

  18. enabling to AHCI from RAID

    besides
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\msahci
    also
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\atapi

    in both cases change registry value of ‘start’ value to 0

    in all fairness I found this extra step for atapi on the Microsoft community

  19. I have two SSD’s setup in Raid 0 (120mb total). I am wanting to move the data on these to a single 240MB ssd. I installed the “Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free” and completed steps 2 and 3. Now I am trying to figure out how to create the backup/restore CD. Is this available in the “Paragon Backup & recovery 2014 Free”? I cannot find a tool there to do that. Is there something else that I have to install to create the backup/restore CD?

    Thanks for the help,
    Kirk

  20. I have RTFM before I posted here the first time….. it was no help. I was finally able to d/l the Paragon Recovery Media builder (and its manual) but I could not make it work.

    Ended up using Macrium Reflect. Cloned my Raid0 to my new single drive. Unplugged my two raid drives, rebooted, and change BIOS setting to IDE…. Bam! Done!

    Sorry I wasted your time. Thanks you for the work you do here.

  21. First – Thank you for writing this article.

    In the article:
    “Step 2 ) Do a FULL backup using Windows backup. ”

    (Win7) Control Panel/Backup and Restore; I do not see the option to do a ‘FULL’ backup. There is the option; however, to
    “Create a system image” on the left margin of the window. There are also the options to “Let Windows choose” and “Let me choose” with the latter being limited and the former conditionally including a system image.

    Would it be clearer if the sentence were expanded to:
    “Step 2 ) Do a FULL backup using Windows backup by choosing the option to ‘Let Windows choose’ which will in effect be creating a system image. ”

    Or alternatively, and more simply:
    “Step 2 ) Do a FULL backup using Windows backup to ‘Create a system image’. “

  22. Before beginning Windows 7 Backup and Restore when using a Western Digital disk, note the following:

    Issue: When using Windows 7 Backup and Restore with a 2.5 TB or 3.0 TB Western Digital drive, the backup fails with an error code of (0x8078002A).

    Cause: This problem is caused by an issue with the Windows 7 Backup and Restore utility when using drives with 4K Logical sector sizes, which are found on WD 2.5 TB and larger external drives. This is different from an “Advanced Format” (AFD) drive which use 4K physical sector sizes. AFD drives should not cause this problem.

    Solution: It is still possible to use a 2.5 TB drive or larger with Windows 7 Backup and Restore, as long as you don’t need to use the drive with Windows XP. Using the WD Quick Formatter tool, select the Factory Default configuration to reformat the drive.

    Reference here

  23. badbod I see this mentioned & I wonder just how person dose this OR dose it happen automatic when clear raid0 in bios.

    ? destroying your array >> Delete – change in bios

    Same ? about: you need to remove your RAID drivers

  24. Badbod, Thank you for a great website. I have a Dell XPS 720 with a RAID 0 configuration. (It uses NVIDIA stripe and 2 WD HDD.) I think one of my drives is failing and want to move everything over to a new single drive. Do I have to follow your post or can I just make a mirror copy of the drive and then change the bios to a non RAID setting?

  25. This works but there are a lot of pitfalls depending on what your hardware configuration is. With this guide I was able to figure it out. I was moving RAID 0 1TB array to a single drive so I could migrate it to a single 512 Samsung Solid State Drive. It took me a couple days but I was successful.

  26. Well this worked! Thank you so much! I did run into a few issues:

    I don’t usually do Windows backups but figured I’d stick to the script. Turns out I couldn’t do them because there wasn’t enough room in the system reserved partition to create a shadow copy. Something like 5mb short. So I had to shave a bit off my main partition and expand the system area.

    Then it became obvious that it would literally take days to do the backup. I went with multiple Acronis and Paragon backups instead.

    My backups were all on an external drive and I made a restore usb stick. It would not boot. Turns out the bios could only see a single usb device as a boot source and it was looking at the hd with the backups. Switching the usb connectors solved this problem and it found the flash drive and booted into recovery.

    From there on out the only problem was my own hesitancy to pull the switch. After realizing that I could swap in the new drive at step 7 and keep my RAID disks intact I had less concerns.

    In any case, all went well and I am back in business!

    Thanks again for this excellent step-by-step guide.

  27. Folks,

    What if you don’t want to break the array? I have an SSD drive arriving and I’d like to move my OS onto it, but keep my current mirrored 750GB drives in their RAID0 format – for data security.

    The RAID0 is handed by the mother board and the Kingston has software to transfer the OS. So is there anything which wouldn’t work with…

    1. Backup (always)
    2. Insert the SSD (I have lots of SATAs)
    3. Boot, run the Kingston software and image the RAID drive.
    4. Restart, change the boot sequence in the motherboard.

    Shouldn’t this end up with the OS on the SSD while still keeping the RAID0 hard drives? If the SSD ever fails… I can just boot to the RAID0 again. Just keep the key data files on the RAID0 drive.

    1. This should work fine, as you are not disabling the RAID. The problem is when changing BIOS from RAID to non-RAID modes, then windows will blue screen at boot due to drivers expecting a RAID array. Just change the boot order should work fine.

  28. A few days ago – before reading your blog – made Win 7 Pro image of C:\ and tested booting to image via Win7Pro install and / or Win 7 Repair disk. Then made image of C:\ with O+O Disk Image 9 (bought it super discount after World Cup Victory). Made O+O boot disk. Checked that Image was accessible. Same page. So far good.

    Vanishing drives: when I tried to restore an image to only one HDD, with the Raid 0 still active, all RAID 0 drives vanished. Drives appeared only in Raid Bios under SIL 3124 / Sata PCI Card (SYPCI40010), not in Spinrite 6.0 or Diskpart. Powermax (dos) said the bios extensions failed.

    Now I’m reading your blog. I see you delete the raid array (Step 6) before restoring the image!!! I’m back to square one after creating a Raid 0 array, then restoring Win7Pro image backup. Asus A7N8X Rev 2.0 motherboard simply has SCSI or SATA as boot order choice. Thought I’d check with you for any insights before doing this again. Using a Syba SYPCI40010 Sata 2 PCI card.

    Raid 0 HDDS are 2TB Hitachi Sata 2. Data on them is Win 7 Pro (12GB) on a 100 GB partition as striped Raid 0. PC: (self built) AMD Asus A7N8Rev2.0 w/Phoenix 10.08 Bios / CPU Athlon XP 3200 2.2gH / 3 GB Ram.

    1. When I delete the raid 0 array and restore the image of Win 7 Pro to a single hard drive, I can only boot by creating a 1 drive concatenation raid – otherwise I get no valid device and PC satas in bios.

      Restored system on single 2 TB Hitachi hdd has one 100gb partition containing System, Boot, Active, Crash dump, Primary Partition.

      Syba Sata2 Pci Controller card – SYPci40010

      1. Further, deleting concatenation raid, the Syba card raid bios says system drive is now a “reserved drive.” It’s as if the raid bios has left metadata on the drive restricting it’s use so I can’t go back to the original setup where Win 7 Pro booted through the Syba card in a nonraid setup.

        1. Im not familiar with that card, but at some point you should destroy the array (from inside the RAID BIOS) then restore your windows to a single drive, then remove the drivers from windows before disabling RAID mode in your BIOS. Seeing as your using an external card you wont have RAID mode set in your main board BIOS, so I cant help much about how to remove drives from your RAID array using that card. But it does have to be done before restoring windows I think

  29. Hi there,

    Nice tutorial, but unfortunately it’s well beyond my IT knowledge.
    I have a RAID 0 config apparently (2 physical drives 500GB each) and about 460GB data in total.
    All I want to do is:
    – clone all computer data to a new SSD.
    – swap the 2 old HDDs with the SSD.

    I don’t intend to use the 2 HDDs for any purpose for the time being (possibly ever).
    Maybe I’m too stupid to grasp this, but why the need for so many back-ups? Once I disconnect the 2 HDDs, the data stored on them won’t be affected I assume. So if anything goes wrong I can always swap them back, isn’t it?
    Given my scenario, shouldn’t the whole procedure simplify somewhat?

    1. Hi,
      The backups are assuming you would be using the old drives, I would still suggest at least one backup anyway. If your data is important to you then better safe than sorry.

  30. I was in the process of “trying” to convert my Raid 0 over to one drive when I came across your article. Firstly let me describe my system. This is a secondary machine, the mother board is an Asus P6T WS Professional, i7 Intel processor, 12gb ram. I had set it up a number of years ago on a Raid 0, now I am trying to convert it over to a SSD. The raid is comprised of two 300gb 10K WD drives. I cloned my C drive to the SSD (Samsung 500bg) drive with their migration software, and followed your procedure, except that on reboot, I unplugged both Raid drives after entering the Intel raid software. I deleted the array and plugged in the SSD, allowed the system to reboot and it booted right into windows. There is a program, Intel raid management software, which I deleted, then deleted the Intel raid drivers under device manager. Rebooted the system, entered the bios, changed the configuration from Raid to IDE (no sata available, you need to select IDE for SATA according to Asus manual), reboot, and get the BSOD! No matter what I tried, windows repair, etc., the same result. If I go back into the bios and reset the controller to RAID, the system boots fine and the same Intel and Marvell drivers appear in device manager?? Also, when the bios is set to RAID, and I check the Intel raid configuration while booting, it shows no array. Is there something in the process I am doing wrong, or is it that my board will not allow the conversion? Also, if it is not possible to migrate to one drive, what would be the problem with using the Intel Raid drivers to run the system? Prior to uninstalling the software, it showed no array present, but still operated fine, no conflicts, etc.
    Thank you,

    Louis

    1. According to the manual for that board, in your ‘Storage configuration’ in BIOS, you have ‘SATA Configuration [enhanced]’. This is where you select AHCI or IDE modes.

      Make sure IDE is selected. Later you can change to AHCI mode once you have installed the drivers. Also make sure you have the latest chipset drivers from Intel website.

  31. Amazing tutorial!!!

    Very clear to understand.

    I have a question. I bought a Lenovo W541 w/raid 0 w/ two HDD (500GB each one) and I’d like to move to SSD (two 500 GB disk).

    I have tried to make a backup for each disk (but I couldn’t). Windows show me just a single disk (built by the RAID 0) and not two…

    I will try:
    1- make a full Windows backup (USB or network) using both Windows and Paragon)
    2- remove and switch the HDD to SSD (the same size)
    3- (at this point I don’t know if is there necessary destroy the HDD RAID and rebuilt a new one with the SSD). I will try both.
    4- recover the Paragon image to the new RAID.

    Does anyone did something like that?

    Thank in advance.

    Dario

    1. Hi, once you have made the backups, and replaced the old disks, you will need to go into your RAID BIOS and create a new RAID array on your new disks. Obviously, after that you just restore and don’t need to bother with the parts about removing drivers and changing RAID/AHCI mode etc. It really should be plain sailing.

      Two SSD in RAID 0!! That will scream along 🙂

  32. Worked like a charm…

    After entering the RAID BIOS and destroying the array, I was actually able to boot right into Windows without having to restore from the paragon backup. From there I just continued from step 9 and I’m now on a single disk.

    Thanks for the great how to!

  33. What an amazing guide, well done and many thanks for describing what appears to be impossible to do.

    All went well as described right to step 8.

    When attempting to boot into Windows, I get an error:
    “The file is possibly corrupt. The file header checksum does not match the computed checksum.”

    Windows 7 booted without problems before the restore.

    How can I resolve this error?

  34. I forgot to add:

    before adding the new non-raid SSD, I had 4 Raid0 disk. They were disk0 to disk3.

    After adding the new non-raid SSD, this new one became disk1. Disk0 remained the same, and the old disk1 became disk2, old disk2 became disk3, and old disk3 became disk4.

    The paragon restore wrote to disk1.

    Does the Paragon restore have to go to disk0 as per step 7?

    1. Update to previous post:
      This problem is solved. I needed Gparted to flag the restored ‘System Reserved’ partition as ‘boot’.

      The next issue that I now face is that my Sony Vaio Z1 uses ‘Intel Rapid Storage Technology’ to access the original Raid0 disk. The controller used is ‘Intel Mobile Express Chipset SATA RAID’ and the driver listed is a ‘RAID SCSI’ driver. (SCSI surprised me to see in this context!)

      At step 8, the new SSD is using the same controller and drivers.

      At this stage it appears that the RAID drivers cannot be uninstalled (it says because Windows requires them to run the session).

      Any attempts to switch the BIOS to IDE or AHCI result in BSOD during boot.

      However, with BIOS set to RAID, all appears to be working just fine. I’m unsure whether that means there is no TRIM for this new SSD (which supports TRIM).

      Any thoughts on what I an/should do here are most welcome.

  35. So, I have an older-but-upgraded to Windows 7 PC running an SQL Server at my workplace. It’s currently in raid 0 with 2 hard drives.

    My question is whether or not you think if I use this method, the SQL server will run fine once I’m running on one drive. I know you probably need specifics; this whole setup was done poorly by somebody else years ago and I have no experience with RAID.

    The other problem I have comes down to the PSU only having the connections for both RAID drives and a single DVD drive, so I’d have to do same workarounds to back everything up, short of installing a new PSU.

    What sucks is this SQL server is what our shop uses to feed programs to our fabrication machines. Any downtime is bad, and WHEN the PC dies we’re basically screwed. I’ll have to do all this post-hours, but as long as you’re confident this would work then I’ll gladly do it.

    1. It should work fine.

      Depending on how your doing backups, then you could disconnect the DVD drive if it is not needed for now?

      Network shares are slightly more fiddly, as you need more checking that you can actually access them from the restore disk you create before doing anything., but they don’t need any PSU power plugs.

  36. I am using Windows 7, RAID 0, 2- 500GB drives. BIOS is RAID/AHCI choice, My question is centered around step # 6 destroy the array. I have, Intel Rapid Storage technology ver 10.0. 0. 1046. installed. Do I uninstall the program which is in folder Program Files (x86) or do I take out the RAID 0 drives in the IRST program? Also there is a driver in Device Manager that is tied to SATA chipset controller, I would uninstall that in Step # 9? Thanks for the help

    1. Long time gone but for any one else, destroy the array means go into the RAID Bios and delete the RAID array. For removing the drivers you can use device manager, tick the ‘Delete drivers’ option when doing so.

  37. After all these years this guide is still appreciated, in this case by me.
    I managed to upgrade my old system from a RAID 0 to a single SSD with AHCI enabled. Thank you.

    P.S.: now the Paragon software is slightly different as MBR and System Reserved are not displayed as partitions. It’s a more visual representation and you can select to backup the entire
    disk or just the Windows partitions on it. Make sure you DO NOT select just the partitions or you may leave MBR and System Reserved partition out of your backup.

  38. Superb article. When I watched Jon’s email, I understand the article will be good and I’m surprised that you wrote it guy! Absolutely good stuffs and keep this up! Can’t agree bookmarked this on Pocket too! Keep it up!

  39. Old thread, new post
    I thought I’d add my experience in doing raid to single disc cloning, because at step 4 I had a quirk, as well as a workaround that got me thru it.

    I could not create the usb boot media thru paragon on a Windows 7 32bit oem HP POS system so I attempted to use my desktop 64bit system to create it. Mind you the POS is running Pro, my desktop is running Ultimate. After testing it on the POS and being able to access the paragon backup created in step 3, I removed the raid1 array by just removing the drives and replaced them with the new empty target single drive. I did not want to destroy the array due to that being my last resort backup if all else failed. I rebooted and moved on to step 7, and would you believe it worked?! Followed thru the rest of the steps and i now have a single drive POS system with all original data intact. Flawless victory here.
    Just thought I’d share that bcuz someone else may have run into the same issue.
    I was surprised it worked from a completely different install on a different machine, and with different architecture as well.
    Great guide, thanks for sharing.

    1. This is fine if you are going to use a completely different drive. You only need to destroy the array if you are going to use a single drive from the original RAID array.

  40. Any notion as to whether this will work for Windows 10?

    I bought a used PC with 2 nvme 500GB drives in RAID 0 as a boot drive … sure it’s fast, but I’m not really OK with the setup long-term. At some point, I’d like to go to an unRAIDED boot drive.

  41. Thank you for this article. It helped me a lot but I still needed to figure out the whole path. The problem is that I used software NVMe RAID for M.2 SSDs. This controller works separately from standard raid controller and there is the separate option in BIOS.

    Steps 7 and 9 doesn’t work in this case. To successfully restore image on single disk you need to turn OFF NVMe RAID after deleting the array. After that you restore the image, only turned off controller allows you to do this. After that you turn ON NVMe RAID again and boot into Windows. There you need to manually select different driver for your SSD. Instead of RAID bottom device select standard NVMe controller. Do this for all drives and them reboot. Now you can turn NVMe RAID controller off in BIOS and Windows will work properly on drives with normal drivers, allows write caching and so on.

    Hope this info helps someone else because I tried around 8 times restoring my windows backup again and again.

  42. Invaluable advice! You should monetize it!!!
    After such a long time I was still able to use your step-by-step solution to replace my Raid 0 with one new drive.
    In case someone interested it was an old Asus Rog G51J with the proprietary Raid0 2×128 M2 2260 SSD Sundisk MLC and Windows 8.1
    I had absolutely no issue with it right until I started to run out of space on a C drive)) So, I’ve got a couple of new 1 TB Samsung SSD’s to replace RAID0 and the DVD Player as well.
    Few updates to the original Instruction thought:
    1. Paragon no longer provides a fully functional free version, but you can get their Paragon Hard Disk Manager 17 Business WS paid full one if you chose TRIAL one month free. It will give you enough time to do your magic ))
    I didn’t try to look for alternatives to Paragon since I had a friend who had many of them tested and it seems that Paragon is by far the best in seeing and coping complete partitions. So don’t waste your time and go with Paragon.
    2. I had no issues whatsoever with the process. Made a backup, and created Back up CD and USB. Removed the old drives, and place the new ones. Restored, booted, TADA! I didn’t even have to do any changes in BIOS as RAID0 disappeared from the Intel Rapid Storage option as I removed it physically, as well as Driver in Device Manager. All new drives were present and ready. I suppose it will be easily switched back as should I want to use the old RAID0 for some silly reason again )
    3. You can redistribute new unallocated space among those newly restored by using the same Paragon Hard Disk Manager

  43. Glad to know it is still useful, thanks for taking the time to let me know about paragon, For windows users , the alternatives that do work well are the not so ‘friendly’ linux variety. Ill update if I find anything easy and free that actually works as well as paragon.
    Shows you how lazy I am, not even got round to putting a ‘donate’ link in the site 🙂

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