Maximum PC

Hey guys,

I have win7 64bit for over 2 years now and still loving it; it is installed in a single HDD ( 2 partition : win7 and game partition)

I recently got 2 extra drive (same model number and size) and is thinking about doing a FRESH INSTALL of the same win7 but in RAID-0.

My question: can i somehow "copy and paste" all the program folders (mostly games) and perhaps registry from the old single HDD ? and will this work ? or do i have to painstakingly have to install every program / games all over again ?

Thanks and if theres a way so i don't have to re-install. Please share ! Thanks !!

No.
Nope, sorry.
Yes.

Now, if you set up the new RAID 0 array and then clone your existing hard drive over, that should be possible and you shouldn't have to re-install anything.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh cuz i heard from someone that its not possible to clone single HDD into Raid-0 pair. They said doing fresh install of win7 on to the Raid-0 is the only option.

But if this is possible, I'll be happy to fire up m Acronis TruImage backup/restore CD

Thanks for your time in replying; i'll try that sometime this month and i'll share the result

Assuming the proper drivers are loaded, it shouldn't matter. The RAID volume just looks like a disk to windows.

Crash, I'd have to slightly disagree on the games front--some games WILL simply drag-and-drop from one hard drive to another. I've seen this work at LAN parties before (and no, nothing illegal has been done to the game in question). However, to the OP: if you drag-and-drop a game, you might have issues with patching since some patch programs look for the game's install directory in the registry. If the game's dragged-and-dropped, surprise, the registry info is missing. This may also cause problems with games which encode their registration/DRM into the registry as well.

In short, it doesn't always work. You can mess around to find out though. Steam game files can be moved around quite easily as long as the account has those games tied to it. It doesn't even have to be "your" files (friends and I were playing TF2--someone didn't have it installed, he cribbed his housemate's files, it worked fine since he'd bought it, just not downloaded it).

oh thanks 4 the info my freinds

I'm still in the extreme gaming-mode so i prolly have to post-pone the conversion to Raid-0, in another week.

But my first try wil be to use Acronis to clone from the current single HDD to the Raid-0 pair.

My single drive (500GB) is partitioned into 3 ( 30GB - win7_64, 400GB - games, 70GB - downloads and temps)

Once cloned, i'll test each games

I also read on some forum.. the suggest to mount the current working single HDD into an external HDD case + put all the drivers on a thumbdrive. This is so that Acronis won't get confused : disk to be cloned = external usb, target = the raid-0 pair, drivers = thumbdrive. And he suggest to do "universal restore" where you have to point to thumbdrive for the drivers (of course including the raid-0 driver).

Am I on the right track now ?

You can sometimes move things, but that doesn't mean you should

Often things don't work property after the fact. Usually safer not to.

Re-install or clone, only way to go IMO.

Yeah, definitely want to make sure you don't accidentally clone the wrong way! Take your time, read things thrice, you'll be fine.

Thanks moderator