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3552
July 8th, 2004 08:00
How to boot from a mirrored disk in a broken array
Guys - pretty desperate I'm afraid ..
Dell Poweredge 1400sc - software raid
My MS Small Bus Server got a problem - tried to log in and only getting account disabled messages (safe mode as well) after a lot of trying very late last night I decided I had to re-install - I had tape backups (or so I thought).
To be on the safe side - I disconnected one of the SCSI disks in the system raid (mirror) & so performed a new install on the single drive. All OK, went to restore from tapes & looks like a faulty drive (yeh - I know ...).
So I want to try and boot from the second drive - or at least read from it - as it should be a full backup of the old system (shouldn't it).
In disk manager I had to break the array on the new system disk - I did this with the other still disconnected. Now with all installed, I can't get it to recognise the second (old mirrored) drive. In disk management I have set it back from dynamic to standard, but it doesn't see it as a windows drive.
What can I do to (preferably) make the old drive bootable (albeit with the old login problem) or how at least can I make it visible in windows so I can recover stuff from it.
I would really be sooo appreciative of any help.
Cheers
Jon
Dell Poweredge 1400sc - software raid
My MS Small Bus Server got a problem - tried to log in and only getting account disabled messages (safe mode as well) after a lot of trying very late last night I decided I had to re-install - I had tape backups (or so I thought).
To be on the safe side - I disconnected one of the SCSI disks in the system raid (mirror) & so performed a new install on the single drive. All OK, went to restore from tapes & looks like a faulty drive (yeh - I know ...).
So I want to try and boot from the second drive - or at least read from it - as it should be a full backup of the old system (shouldn't it).
In disk manager I had to break the array on the new system disk - I did this with the other still disconnected. Now with all installed, I can't get it to recognise the second (old mirrored) drive. In disk management I have set it back from dynamic to standard, but it doesn't see it as a windows drive.
What can I do to (preferably) make the old drive bootable (albeit with the old login problem) or how at least can I make it visible in windows so I can recover stuff from it.
I would really be sooo appreciative of any help.
Cheers
Jon
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Todd Smith
35 Posts
0
July 8th, 2004 12:00
JonTheLoft
7 Posts
0
July 9th, 2004 07:00
Todd is right that reverting the disk from Dynamic to basic was the problem. However, this process wipes the partition table, not the data. With the help of a microsoft engineer and a tool called dskprobe (installed from the W2K install disk), I was talked through the manual recreation of the partition table. dskprobe is a direct disk sector editor & you really need to know what your doing - I wouldn't attempt to use it again without help. However, once the partition table was restored, the disk was recognised and worked fine - so I was able to recover all data.
Apparantly, when I originally installed the disk (formally one of a mirror pair no longer in the server) and it wasn't recognised, there should have been a method to 'Import' the disk. Anyway, setting it to basic is WRONG. The microsoft guy was not convinced the Import would alway work (depends on the PC setup) but as the new server build was the same as the old one, it probably would have done.
Live & learn - I hope this may help someone else facing a similar problem.