View/Copy Windows RAID0 array from Ubuntu Live CD

By John Bowen, 2 January, 2009

I had a customer computer, which was running Windows XP Pro on a RAID 0 array (striping). There were twin 230GB hard drives, striped into a 460GB RAID0. Customer bought new 1 TB drives, and wanted them installed. This time, though, there would be no RAID, just one drive for the OS and programs, and one for the customer's data.

I wanted to see if I could get Ubuntu's Live CD to copy the RAID0 partition from the old drives to a new partition on the new terabyte drive. The Ubunut (Ibix, 8.10) Live CD comes with GParted on it, so copying partitions from one disk to another is a snap. THe issue is that you have to get Ubuntu to recognize the Windows FakeRaid before you can copy anything...GParted won't (by itself) see the RAID0/striping, and it wil look like two unformatted disks.

The solution, it turns out, is pretty simple. You only have to install one more package to let Ubuntu Live see your RAID. Boot to the Live CD, make sure the machine has an Internet connection, and issue the command:

_sudo apt-get install dmraid_

Once that's is complete, (re)start GParted, and your RAID devices will show up in the list. Note that they'll have some craxy-long complex names, but there's logic to the naming. The one without the numeric identifier is the actual RAID, the others are the participating partitions. This is what mine looked like:

isw_bfjbdhhcea_ARRAY
isw_bfjbdhhcea_ARRAY1
isw_bfjbdhhcea_ARRAY2

You can now use GParted as normal to copy the partitions from your array to the new hard drive.

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