To continue from this post, I’ve started on my NAS/File Server setup. I read several guides on setting up RAID 1 on an Intel motherboard, and trying to follow first one and then another, I pooched the setup big time. So I’m sorta winging it now.
I setup RAID in UEFI with two identical 3TB Seagate NAS drives. I setup two arrays on the drives, one array of 1.7TB and another at 1TB. Next I rebooted to a Windows 7 installation USB, and installed Windows 7 just to get the EFI partition created and a BCD written. Once the Windows 7 install was complete, I didn’t bother to activate, I just booted into TBWinRE.
I used TBWinRE to restore an image of my SSD with Windows 10 Pro Insider Preview 10532, and then rebooted. Naturally, the BCD was pointing to an invalid GUID for the drive, so I used DISKPART to give the EFI partition a drive letter, then bootrec.exe in Command Prompt to run /fixboot, rename the existing BCD to BCD.BAK, then bootrec.exe again to recreate the BCD store. That puts the correct GUID’s in place. I then rebooted, and Windows 10 Pro IP 10532 booted just fine, but in System Properties it wasn’t activated.
I did some preliminary personalization, including renaming the PC, then rebooted so that the changes would take effect. After the reboot, Windows was activated. I didn’t have to do a thing. Of course, this is an Insider Preview, which may simplify things, but it is also a Retail Windows 7 Professional SP1 that was upgraded, so it should be portable.
So that’s two successful migrations of Retail Upgraded Windows 10 Pro from one machine to another. I’m now formatting my RAID arrays to get that part of the new setup going. I’m using full format, so I expect it to take quite a bit of time, but I also want to be certain that both disks have been thoroughly checked before I start loading data on them.
