Re: RAID 1 in a "White Box" Server?

From: Buddy Greenshield (gcsbend-at-bendcable-dot-com)
Date: 01/19/05 

Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 14:00:51 -0800

Sorry for the delay in posting - I've been away for a few days.

Actually, you can use the workstation version of Acronis. ($99.-) Take the
drive out of the server, put it in a workstation and clone it, then proceed.
Also, when you use the Linux boot environment to do the clone, it doesn't
care whether the system is a server or workstation. While Linux is running,
it's simply an x86 box.

While the acronis for server is kind of pricey, it's small potatoes compared
to the time it takes to rebuild a server from scratch. The cool feature of
Acronis is that you can create full images without shutting down the server.
It's worth it.
**Warning** Make sure the Boot CD will work with your RAID controller or
your images will not be of any help when you cannot restore them. Acronis
has issues with SATA Raid at the moment.

Buddy
"Jim G" <JimG@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:387A690F-6916-4133-A11A-DDF385E90503@microsoft.com...
> Thanks Buddy for the excellent write-up.
>
> Before following your steps, I'm thinking about putting in a slave IDE
drive
> on which to save an image of the server drive. Henry recommended either
Ghost
> or Acronis. It appears that the Acronis server product is kinda pricey. Is
> there an inexpensive soloution?
>
> "Buddy Greenshield" wrote:
>
> > Yes, it's possible to do what you want. The fasttrak controller will let
you
> > choose which drive to use as the source to build / rebuild the array
from.
> > It even detects which drive has data already on it - assuming the other
> > drive is new - and suggests the correct one as source. Be careful, as if
you
> > select the empty drive as source, it will build and empty array. You
might
> > consider imaging the original drive first with Ghost or Acronis.
> >
> > As for how to do it..heres a rough draft of how I would do it..
> > 1) Install the Promise card and hook up the new 60G drive to it. Leave
your
> > original drive / controller untouched. Start up the server, let the
promise
> > card detect a drive and load it's BIOS.
> > 2) The array controller will warn you that no array exists, for now
create a
> > raid 0 stripe with the single drive or just exit the utiliy and go on to
> > boot the server if you can.
> > 3) Once windows loads, it will detect the card and load drivers for it.
You
> > may have to or want to update the drivers from promise over the one that
> > shipped with Windows.
> > 4) After Windows can recognize the promise controller, hook up both
drives
> > to the array card, each drive on it's own IDE channel, and reboot.
> > 5) The array controller will warn you again. At this time, create the
mirror
> > and choose the source drive carefully. It may take a while for the array
to
> > build.
> > 6) After that, you should be up and running.
> >
> > "Jim G" <JimG@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> > news:ECEF3F22-6104-4EC7-B235-F169DD8D191C@microsoft.com...
> > > I have a single Maxtor IDE 60GB drive in my white box server. It's at
my
> > > house with only three of us using it. We're mainly using it for
Exchange.
> > The
> > > hard drive has two partitions (system & data). The server is backed up
> > > nightly to a client machine but I'm thinking of installing a RAID 1
array
> > > hopefully using the existing drive. Is it possible to install a
controller
> > > card such as a Promise FastTrak TX2000, and a second drive without
having
> > to
> > > reinstall the OS on the the original drive? If it's possible, where is
> > there
> > > a good explanation of how to actually do it?
> >
> >
> >

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