0

Our current situation: X79 chipset. Windows 7 installed on SATA SSD running on Marvell controller. C:\Users contains just Public and computer-name folders, all the other users are created in E:\Users. That partition is on two HDD's running on an Intel RAID controller. (The motherboard has got two SATA/RAID onboard controllers.)

The goal is: Without reinstallation, I want to move SSD to a standard SATA controller. Then I want to get rid of RAID1, and move one HDD to the same internal Intel SATA controller and the current E:\Users move to that new place. I want it to stay as E:\users, but I need to reinstall the HDD to let it work in SATA mode without RAID.

So I face several problems. I am sure all are solvable with free software utilities, but I don't know how exactly to do it. I can see the particular problems:

  1. I have got all users at E:\Users. When I turn off that E:\ disk, I won't be able to login to Windows. I need at least one admin account to be placed back at C:\users.

  2. The current C: runs on standard 120 GB SSD, but it is connected to a Marvell SATA/RAID controller. I am affraid the Windows won't let me put it to Intel SATA controller due to hardware/licence check, and I won't be able to use standard W7 recovery disk either, because there probably isn't marvel SATA/RAID driver on it. I haven't tried anything yet, because I am affraid I can end up with computer not working at all. (I want to move it to a standard ICH10 Intel SATA controller to let us have no problems in future with it. I think it is not very safe when we use any nonstandard hardware to boot the computer.)

  3. I need to somehow backup current E:\ disk and restore it to a new E:. I hope this will be the easy part (as long as the admin account will reside on C:). The E: RAID array is very large, but it is almost empty (less than 100 GB of data.) So I can make the partition smaller so it can easily fit to a single SATA HDD.

2 Answers 2

0
  1. Create new user with admin rights
  2. Logon to that account
  3. In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList find your current admin account and chage ProfileImagePath to c:\users\youradmin and move his home folder to c:\users\
  4. Restart PC and logon as that current admin
  5. Now you can create new E: partition and move other accounts there
1
  • Is it possible to "move" all files with all current flags and ACL? I mean other way than backup-restore partition. I mean does some command line utility copy everything with access rights, including possible existing file encryption?
    – Al Kepp
    Nov 14, 2012 at 20:49
0

Interestingly, it all went quite easily, quickly a smoothly. And no special software was needed.

  1. I simply set HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList to C:\users. Then I created a new admin user account, and then I set that registry key back to E:\Users.

  2. I opened IBM RAID manager in Windows 7, and deleted RAID partition.

  3. I turned off the computer, and swapped the SATA cables. (SSD to Intel SATA3 controller, HDD's to Marvell SATA3 controller.)

  4. I unplugged SATA cables from HDD's, turned on the computer, changed BIOS SATA mode from RAID to AHCI.

  5. I booted to Windows 7, plugged the SATA cables to HDD's. One of them appeared as E: and everything works fine. :-)

  6. I used diskpart command line utility to change unique ID of the other disk of the former RAID1 array. Then deleted and recreated NTFS partition on it.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .