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Monday, July 11, 2011

Clonezilla and RAID

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/SataRaid
I have a hard drive that was a part in a RAID matrix. I want to clone a partition from this drive, but the drive doesn't get mounted by ntfs-3g: 
mount failed: Device or resource busy 
After having done some digging, I understood that the hard drives still has some RAID metadata. I think that because of this, the system tries to do something with it (while booting the live cd), and it doesn't release it. 
I see to possible directions: 
1) to delete the RAID metadata - I tried to do this but didn't succeed 
2) to modify the live cd boot process and to disable the part that "interprets" and "gets confused" by the RAID metadata that is found 
If I use a System Rescue CD, I don't have this problem (i.e. I can successfully mount the ntfs partitions using ntfs-3g). 
I forgot to mention that I don't want to lose the data from that harddrive.
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The correct boot parameter is
"nodmraid" (without quotes).
I have a software RAID 1 matrix (for mirroring), and I used Clonezilla successfully to create images. I will post the instructions. I see that there is a lot of people interested in using Clonezilla for RAID config, so maybe this is helpful. If you think so, you could put a link from the faq/wiki/etc. I have a RAID 1 setup (configured for mirroring, i.e. each HDDs is the exact copy of the other one). My RAID controller is a cheap, software one. However, I can still use Clonezilla to create restore images using the following steps: * when the live cd boots, press TAB, which will allow you to add additional boot params; add "nodmraid" (without quotes) * you will be able to see your HDDs (e.g. /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1) * chose a partition (or disk) that you want to "clone" * the destination should by: a third HDD, an USB device (stick or HDD), or SAMBA (Microsoft Networking) * proceed When restoring, you have to perform similar steps, but you need to restore the saved image to both HDD (or partitions). For example, I saved /dev/sda1. When restoring, I restore it first to /dev/sda1 and second to /dev/sdb1. Restart your system and that's it.
So this method works for RAID 1. I have put a link here

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