Re: can't boot from mirrored boot drive

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arggggggg.....

No, my disk is not exactly the same, it's same size etc etc but the other
disk is about a year old, I can't get and identicle disk any more, it's
discontinued. Ok... I give up, why does MS come up with this sort of thing
if it isn't guaranteed to work? This is supposed to be a fault tolerant
system. I have an excellent supplier of hard disks and I talked to them
about this and they foune me a drive that was very close to the original
failed drive as well, so it's not like I stuck a completely different disk in.

Fine, will go out and get another couple of sata RAID controllers, thank
god they are inexpensive enough these days anyway. I just thought for once
that I might be able to use what I had available, but again, I find that my
MS certification for windows 2003 server was pretty much an futile lesson.

On the other hand, thanks for your help in this John and answering my
questions, I do appreciate it.

Cheers
Bill

"John John" wrote:

PS:

Reasons why Windows NT does not boot from a shadow mirror drive
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/167045

John

John John wrote:

Well then it looks like you have to boot on
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)

If the disk containing the primary partition fails you will have to
create a fault tolerant boot floppy to recover the installation.

John

billd wrote:

hmmm, seems to have missed a post here :-(
I used winobj, the arc name folder showed me that rdisk1 is actaully
\device\harddisk2 and that rdisk2 is actually \device\harddisk1 so,
it appeared to me I had rdisk1 and it should have been rdisk2... so I
changed it and then got the message in the previous post, it can't
find windows root\system32\config\system... I think, as someone read
that to me over the phone... it didn't boot. So I'm not sure if that
is worse or better... it looks to me as though it should be rdisk2.

Also, in ARC names, the partitio n that it is booted from successfully
C: has the following entries:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2) SymbolicLink
\Device\HarddiskDMVolumes\MetaDg0\Volume1

and the plex/mirror has:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2) SymbolicLink
\Device\Harddisk1\Partition1

No other paths are pointing at any sort of MetaDG0\Volume type entry.

Under the Device\Harddisk folders, Harddisk0 and Harddisk1 both have
MegaDg0 entries under them...

If I had a known good working system, I could compare, but I don't,
all my other systems use hardware RAID.

Thanks
Bill





"billd" wrote:


grrrr... the message changed, but it still doesn't boot...

now is says it can't find:

\windows\system32\config\system (that's read to me from someone over
the phone, I hope its right)

is that better or worse than the:

<windows root>\system32ntoskrnl.exe

message?

Geesh this is frustrating

How can I tell, in winobj which harddisk is which?



"John John" wrote:


To me it sounds like the ARC path is wrong, you should be able to
see the drives' ARC paths with WinObj. Does it match the ARC path
in your boot.ini file?

John

billd wrote:


Well, I used bootcfg after I created the mirror and it looked
fine. I've just installed WinObj, but I can't seem to see anything
there that helps me identify what is the problem on this disk.

Basically, I'd like to know how to approch this disk. Do I break
the mirror, shutdown and remove the good boot disk rdisk(0) and
just leave the disk that doesn't want to boot in and boot to the
recovery conole to check it out?

Then if I can see the problem and take whatever steps, how do I put
a mirror back in place, without removing the mirror and putting the
mirror back? I haven't done this before... well, not in windows,
only in PERC and other hardware raid controllers and while I have
googled this extensively, I get conflicting information as to if I
need a floppy boot disk with boot.ini on it or not, which I don't
currently have (I assume as the disks are mirrored, they each have
a copy of boot.ini right?)
Was there a step I missed in mirroring the disk, do I have to do
anything besides install it, go to disk manager and make it dynamic
and then add mirror to it? Do I have to make it bootable somehow
first?

I've worked hardware RAIDs and even Linux S/W RAID without
incident, but this one has got me befuddled.

Thanks


"John John" wrote:



The Recovery Console's bootcfg or map commands or using
Sysinternal's WinObj tool in the up and running installation may
shed some light on the situation.

John

billd wrote:


Yes, I am... The first disk boots ok. There is an EISA partition
that is the first partition on the first rdisk(0). So I boot
from the second. On the second harddisk rdisk(1) there are only
two partitions, the first is the boot, but it will not boot.

Thanks for your response..
Bill

"John John" wrote:




You are trying to boot on the second partition on the first hard
disk, is that where the installation resides?

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)
^^^^^^^^

John

billd wrote:




Hi,

Recently, my mirrored drive in my 2K3 server died. I took the
drive out, removed the mirror, but new drive in, replaced the
mirror. It says it is healthing and the mirror is fine.
However, if I try to boot from the mirrored drive, it fails
with the error:

windows could not start because the following file is missing
or corrupt:
<windows root>\system32ntoskrnl.exe

please reinstall a copy of the above file.

Now that would normally say to me that the boot.ini is
incorrect, but it looks right to me:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows Server
2003 for Small Business Server" /noexecute=optout /fastdetect

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Boot Mirror C: -
secondary plex" /noexecute=optout /fastdetect

the disks are mirrored, so the path to windows should be
correct yes? They are sata drives, drive 0 and drive 1 on the
main system board's controller. I was able to format the drive
correctly etc before I made the mirror> I can look at
properties of the disk in disk manager - everything seems sweet
until I try and boot the secondary. There are three partitions
on rdisk(0) 102MB EISA Configuration) C: 12GB NTFS (Healthy
System) and Logs (G:) 62.40 GB NTFS Healthy

rdisk(1) only has 2 partitions, the C: and G: which are
mirrored and healthy. When I set up the mirror, it did not
give me the opportunity to mirror the EISA Configuration.

Anyway, it would appear that I am running on empty to coin a
phrase because if my first drive fails, it looks as though I
would not be able to boot the mirror drive. How can I see what
the state of that drive is? Do I need to break the mirror and
unplug the rdsk(0) and see if it will boot? What is the best
procedure for this.

Thanks








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