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Dell SAS 5/iR card in a PE 840
Hello,
I'm so looking for some insight and confirmation on this card. Please help me while I still have some hair left! I have replaced both existing 250 GB mirrored drives with 2 TB drives. At first I was hoping to keep the existed OS installation by simply cloning it to the new drives but there wasn't anything simply about that. Here is what I did.. I pulled the existing 250 GB drive (drive 0) out of the Server. I place it and a new 2 TB drive in another computer running Windows 7. I then used Acronis Clone software on the Windows 7 machine to clone the 250 GB drive to the new 2TB drive. I then put the 2 TB drive in the Server as drive 0 AND another new 2 TB drive in the Server as drive 1 (of course on the SAS card that is). Next, I booted to the SAS card BIOS and was thinking I would be able to have drive 0 resync or rebuild itself onto drive 1 and then I would have my RAID 1 configuration up and running. Boy was I wrong! :( The only option was to rebuild the array and delete the data on both drives in doing so. I abandoned this entire idea as you'll see in my next paragraph. BUT, for future reference, how can I accomplish this? Someone in another forum told me I need to use expensive imaging software and create an image of the existing RAID 1 drive(s), replace the existing drives with the new ones, create the array in the bios for the new drives and then boot to the image I created and install from there. Is that the only way? That imaging software I found for Server 2003 seems to run about $600. That’s not an option and I didn't want to waste time with free software that may or may work with the existing array so instead I did the following and now I have other questions and concerns. Here it is, round two...
I installed the two new 2 TB drives in the Server on the SAS card. I booted to the SAS card BIOS and created the virtual disks. I installed Windows 7 (not Server 2003). Next, I went into the SAS card bios and it didn’t look like the mirror was setup. The only option I saw that made sense was to “synchronize mirror”. So that is what I selected! It has been synchronizing for about 20 hours now and it’s at 88%. IS THAT NORMAL? Did I do it correctly??? BTW, Windows 7 found the drivers for the SAS card. I didn’t have to download anything. Is that ok?
Assuming I did everything correctly and everything works, how can I explain to someone how to monitor the array. I haven’t seen any type of monitoring utility. Is the only way to keep an eye on the status of the array to look at the screen when rebooting? Will the boot process stop with a notification if there is an issue with one of the drives? OR, I guess what I’m trying to ask is, how will I know if one of the drives fails???
Thank You!
theflash1932
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October 29th, 2011 09:00
The SAS 5/iR is a very limited hardware RAID solution. I have not actually done this on this particular card (as most systems I use have a PERC 5/6 controller), but my understanding with how that card works is that you will need to backup to and restore from external media. It isn't necessary to spend $600, but you will need a utility that can successfully talk to the SAS 5/iR ... or allows you to load a driver for doing so. One thing you might be able to do on a SAS 5/iR is - if you have enough SAS/SATA drops for all four drives, is to add the two larger drives and configure them in your RAID 1 - side by side with the existing/smaller RAID 1, then image one array to the other.
Starting with Vista/2008, Microsoft added a relatively large driver store, adding drivers for an impressive number of devices. So, when working with modern OS's (NOT XP/2003 and earlier), you might come to expect most system devices to be automatically detected and installed with "native" drivers. So, the fact that Windows 7 found your SAS 5/iR is completely normal. Just know that the SAS 5/iR also supports non-RAID, so it is necessary to configure RAID (as you did) before installing the OS, as it will take wiping everything out and restoring from backup to convert from non-RAID to RAID later.
Because of the size of your drives, the fact that you are likely using slow SATA drives (hopefully at least Enterprise-class drives), and a slow/low-end controller, it is normal for the synch to take that long.
Monitoring the array ...
pcgalofcal
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October 29th, 2011 09:00
Thank you. I feel better! One question left... You said "you will need to backup to and restore from external media. It isn't necessary to spend $600, but you will need a utility that can successfully talk to the SAS 5/iR ... or allows you to load a driver for doing so. " Can you give me an example of a utility that can talk to a the SAS 5/iR card??? What if I just used the Windows backup and did a restore from that after creating the array and loading an OS for the purpose of being able to boot up?
theflash1932
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October 29th, 2011 12:00
Windows Backup would be fine.
I don't have a lot of experience with many specific utilities, but you could try Clonezillla - it is open source and I believe it would do the job.
pcgalofcal
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October 29th, 2011 12:00
Thank You. You've been a big help. :emotion-5:
pdjy
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November 29th, 2011 09:00
I'm in a similar situation. I have the SAS 5/IR card with 2 250 GB drives in a RAID-0 configuration. I'd like to clone this drive, would Clonezilla work? It seems that Acronis didn't work for the OP, I'm also going to try Norton Ghost, but wanted to see if anyone had some success cloning and with what application.
tegoky
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April 19th, 2012 08:00
Create an Acronis boot disk (using version 2012). Connect an external USB drive then boot from the CD.
Create an image on the USB drive, shutdown, install the new drives and create an empty array. Boot from the Acronis CD again then restore to new array.
Download and burn a boot disk for the linux "System Recovery CD" - boot with this CD and use gparted to resize the partiton on the array to fill out
the disk. Windows will run a disk check on the next boot and you should be good to go.