Several months ago, I made the mistake of trying to add a new mirrored volume to my workstation. The original configuration was a RAID 1 array of two 1GB disks split into a C: and E: drive (D: is always the CD-ROM or equivalent in my world). I had decided to modify things by adding another RAID 1 array of two 2GB disks to handle the E: drive, because I was running out of space on C: and wanted to change the partition sizes, plus add some hefty new data space.
This failed spectacularly during the attempt to clone the E: drive to the new volume. Whatever happened — I thought early on that it might have been due to an insufficiently-large power supply, but have come to believe it was due to outdated drivers for the Intel Rapid Storage Technology that came with the motherboard when I built the machine — it whacked the two 2GB drives so badly that I still can’t get them to work, and crippled the existing mirror set, again so badly that I had to break the mirror and run “one-lunged” with the one drive that was still performing decently.
Matters stood this way for some time because I did not have good backup software (I was using the Windows 7 built-in backup, which is worthless unless you intend to restore the entire volume in one fell swoop). And performance got worse and worse and worse.
Finally, in August, I bought a copy of Acronis* True Image and started making GOOD backups to an external USB-connected drive. But I haven’t had time to actually make a backup, stop the machine, replace the drives, and restore the backup to the new hardware until this weekend. I replaced the Western Digital Green drives that I had been using (WD10EARS) with Seagate** Barracudas (ST1000DM003) and, with the Acronis Plus Pack added to True Image, was able to restore my backup and increase the size of my C: partition in the bargain. I started running the restore last night after dinner and when I woke up this morning it was done.
I booted up after a couple of false starts and managed to get logged in to the new hardware. Problem: Although things were faster, things weren’t really working properly. A couple of driver installs got missed (the sound card and the CPU drivers…really???) and neither Windows Update or Windows Defender were operating — both were throwing fairly constant errors, as a matter of fact. So I went googling.
It turns out that the Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers were the culprit again.*** I was running a version from 2009 and I found a brand-new revision on the Intel driver site dated just this past August, 11.6.0.1030, which I installed. After a couple of reboots to get the drivers installed, Windows came back up complaining that it needed updates — and the problem was solved.
And the machine is running like a top, very fast, comparable to the performance I got when it was brand new. No more one-lunging it. Yay.
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* We use Acronis enterprise backup products at work. I figured how bad could their home/office offering be? Turns out it’s pretty damn good.
** And no snide remarks about the Seagate drives from my tech-weenie friends. We use Seagate desktop drives like this all the time at work. We also had a bunch of WD Green drives. Note the tense of that last sentence. I’ll never buy another WD Green drive again.
*** Thanks to this page: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-windows_install/error-when-trying-to-upgradecopy-image-for-new/1eb03d07-04f8-40d6-8e51-7b9858c28962