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How to upgrade to larger hard drives on PE1800 w CERC SATA 1.5/6?
Hi,
I have an PE 1800 w Cerc Sata 1.5/6, Windows 2003 server.
I have now tried 3 times unsucessfully to simply put images of existing drive on new drives and put in place of old in a RAID -1 configuration.
My plan was simple, Image an existing drive to a new one, put it in its place, re-create the array as a RAID-1. Yeah, right.
If you image an existing drive to the new one, and put on the CERC, you can ONLY SET IT AS CONCATENATED OR RAID 0. Well guess what, if you do that, you cannot add a second drive later and RAID-1 them together! The CERC will not let you! R they serious?
So, to try to get around this, I figure I'll trick the CERC.
I image one of the drives (add partiions first then copy images over to it), and just blank format the second drive.
I put them both in place of the original disks, the imaged on port 0, the blank on port 1, reboot.
I go into Cerc Raid manager, delete the origianal Raid 1 array , and rebuild the array with the 2 new drives.
Here is stupid again....that when creating the array, it does not let you chose which drive to mirror to which, it just "does it". Well, what it did was mirror the balnk drive port 1 to the one with image on it port 0! Good grief man, are you kidding me? How can it not let you choose the direction of the mirror?
So, no I must start all over again. I wipe all drives, create 3 partitions (Dell utility, C: drive, D: drive) by sticking drive in a window XP machine, make them all primary.
Now, the CERC does not see either of the drives. Then how the heck am I suppoed to tools to set them as active or as "boot" in the MBR etc if they are invisible int he CERC?
I have both drives in the CERC and want to simply use some tools to check or change the boot.ini but can't, it will not see the drives. I even tried the Windowes 2003 server CD, R for Repair, and then run cootcfg to rebuild the MRB. Nope, you can't do that either.
Either I'm stupid or this controller is.
Anybody point me in the right direction, my attempts have failed at this seemingly simple operation.
Thanks,
MP
mrpush
17 Posts
0
February 22nd, 2012 17:00
Flash,
Well I have been toying wiht this and now I'm kind of in a ditch, becaseu basically the CERC / Open Manager are junk, and one does not know what the other is doing.
I deceided to go the "put a single larger drive in place of a smaller drive, and rebuild".
Well when I tried that, I wiped out all the data on the larger drive by deleting partitions in Drive manager. The CERC BIOS saw the new drive as a "degraded raid-1" and also the original drive as a "degraded raid 1". What the?
Appearently the larger drive still had some previous ARRAY DATA on it, you know that data that I though I could not get on the new drives to get them to work with images copies?
So now I boot to Open manager, check the arrays. The Original raid 1 drive shows as Degraded raid 1. That seems normal, however, it will not let me add another drive to it or re-configure it. I can only "unmirror"
So I re-boot again just to see what happens without making changes. Hey how about that, things changed again.
Now the CERC bios sees the original disk as a "VOLUME" not raid-1 degraded. What the?
I zap the larger dirve I attempt to get in the mix and format it with Open manager.
I put the original small mirror drive back in and the CERC does not see it as the original mirror partner, just another drive.
Great, so now I have lost redundancy.
I can unmirror the 1st original drive, but since these systems obviously do not work correctly together, who the heck knows what will happen and I'm afraid to do that.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
MP
mrpush
17 Posts
0
February 22nd, 2012 17:00
Update...well how about that, the unmirror will not even work. Gives me an error.
Wow...do they not test this things in multipule scenrios?
MP
mrpush
17 Posts
0
February 22nd, 2012 18:00
Hi,
So it appers I have tricked the CERC and it has changed a RAID 1 to a "VOLUME" and now its stuck there and cannot be changed back to a RAID-1, I get and error that "this cannot be done". Does anyone know how to re-trick this CERC and get my redundancy back.
Wow, I can't believe that this is this difficult the fact that a CERC that you depend upon can be messed up so easily. Again what blows me away is the CERC BIOS says one thing and OPEM MANAGER says another.
If anyone has any suggestions that would be great. I now have a non-redundant system with a CERC that is stuck with no ability to re-mirror my drives when I clearily should be able to.
Thanks,
MP
mrpush
17 Posts
0
February 24th, 2012 11:00
Dalario,
Nice to have some company in this CERC SATA nightmare. LOL.
I have spent a week messing around with this controller that does all kinds of crazy stuff and changes setting without any input from me!
I have forgone the "swap one larger for smaller and rebuild" as when I tried that the new larger drive already had some CERC array data on it as I tried to put a clone image on that drive prior. Wow, talk about screwing things up. The CERC killed my RAID-1 degraded and set it to type VOLUME in my case. Now I am unable to do anything with this drive, its lost its redundancy AND it can't be fixed. It has "unmirror" in tasks, but it does not work. I can't add a global spare to it either, its hosed.
Oh yeah, the CERC BIOS says type "VOLUME" but in Open Manager, it stil says "RAID-1 Degraded". Two different things! It is all messed up and it was easy!
After lots of reading it turns out in some Dell guide it says to "make sure you initialize any replacement drives prior to using as rebuilds to remove CERC array data."
Huh, they needed to add to that that statment that if you don't, it will completely confuse the CERC and wreck your arrays. Oh, did I mention that the other drive in the broken RAID 1, which should have been a perfect backup to the other, IS NOT EVEN SEEN on the CERC anymore, just shows up as another drive. Well what heppendd to the array data on that one? Must be the CERC gets jacked as well if you swap drive on other ports with different Drive ID's.
You got "LEGACY" wow, thats one I never saw.
Anyway, the bottom line with this CERC is to NOT MESS WITH IT at all or you will be in trouble. Take full backups of all your data and operations system, system state etc before even openign the case to touch this thing.
Now, I have already done what you mentioned.
I added my 2 new drives (Oh, and they somehow show up as a RAID-1 pair and start to rebuild! LOL! Can you believe it) Anyway, I created a new Virtual disk from them in OPEN MANAGER, added partitons with Windoes Disk Manager, Set the partitons the same as my originals (boot partition to be ACTIVE).
I cloned the partitions using DriveImage XML. Everything seemed to go fine, however the cloned drive will not boot.
I have tried a conglomerate of BOOTCFG, BOOTFIX, FixMBR etc, but I have yet to get it.
I believe the problem lies in that either the BOOT.ini or the drive letters assigned in the CERC.
Odd thing is that Driveimage XML and windows see the Boot drive letter as G, but the CERC (when I boot from Windows CD, apply CERC drivers, and then browes drive) sees the boot partiton as D. Go figure.
I'm going to tinker with the boot.ini, as I believe it looks for DRIVE 0 in the disk(0) or rdisk(0) part of boot.ini, and this new imaged partiton is on DRIVE 2 in the CERC and windows.
I did get a "NTLDR not found" on one boot attempt.
I *might* be close with this method.
I sepnt so much time as the image tools are great for DR, but if you can;t get them to boot, well, ya know.
If i can't get this cloned drives to boot, i will just wipe out the drives do a new OS install on the CERC Array, then restore from a FULL backup.
What I was trying to avoid fromt he start.
Anybody have advice?
Thanks
MP
mrpush
17 Posts
1
February 28th, 2012 12:00
Whoops, don't forget to get the CERC Stat 1.5/6 drivers from dell site. You need them on a floppy. When booting to OS CD, press F6, it will grab them from the floppy drive. Press "S", select CERC SATA and enter. Yo willnot wee all the drives on the CERC.
mrpush
17 Posts
1
February 28th, 2012 12:00
Hi,
I figured it out. After trying everything possible to get this image to boot, I happened into the CERC BIOS array manager. Huh, look at that. There is a CTRL-B option to change the array boot order. Who saw that? Not me. Who read that in the documentation? Not me cause its not there! It mention "boot array" but does not mention that you MUST do tis on a new boot array, no instructions.
Turns out that this CERC is in charge period or the Boot devices and their settings. Try to change the boot stuff on a drive attached to ths CERC that is NOT set as the boot array and forget it. It prevents changing drive letters as well.
Once set as the boot array, my images were bootable after running the fixes for boot issues.
I ran FIXBOOT, FIXMBR, and BOOTCFG /rebuild from the Windows OS CD recovery console and it booted right up.
Let me give a warning however. This CERC is jacked. It works ok and is consistant, as long as you DON'T MESS WITH IT.
If you think you are going to pop in a few new drives in place of others, move drives onto different ports doing a few reboots in the process and you will have a messed up RAID. This controller changes setting on you all by itself.
I lost a RAID-1 to a "VOLUME" type in the BIOS and a "DEGRADED" raid-1 in the Dell open manager. Two different things! YIKES! The drive is now stuck that way and cannot be remirrored, not spared or changed.
I REPEAT DO NOT MESS WITH THIS CONTROLLER, YOU WILL BE SORRY YOU DID!