Re: Need to add redundancy

W,

I performed this type of upgrade on my test server at home (not a production
server for a client). I had originally installed SBS on a single IDE drive.
The drive started to fail.... I upgraded to hardware RAID 1 using a Promise
controller.

Follow the instructions that come with your RAID controller....

Here's a rough overview of the steps I followed.

1. Make sure you have a complete backup of the IDE drive.
2. Install the RAID card driver on existing IDE drive. Reboot the box and
make sure the box and SBS2003 still boots and behaves normally.
3. Power down and remove the IDE drive. Ghost it onto a new SATA drive. I
guess you'd do this on a workstation that has both IDE and SATA connectors
built into the board. The drives probably use different types of power
connectors.
4. Install RAID card in server.
5. Attach new, Ghosted SATA drive to the RAID controller.
6. Follow the instructions that come with the RAID card to get the
Motherboard to recognize the card as the boot device in the BIOS.
7. Make sure the MB recognizes the RAID card as the boot device and that
SBS2003 boots and functions as before.
8. Install second SATA drive and build the array according to instructions.
9. Install and configure the RAID management software according to
instructions.

If you are not too worried about blazing performance, you could build an IDE
RAID 1 array a little more easily and economically. Maybe save the SATA/SCSI
upgrade for another day/year. Of course, this depends upon the overall
quality of your other hardware, your budget, how many users you have, etc.

Jim G

"Matt" <mail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:uefMgHAKGHA.2912@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I personally don't have much experience in this area, but I think that
going this route might casue problems at boot time. Won't the OS be
looking for an IDE drive to boot off of, and not a RAID SATA drive?
Please correct me if I am wrong.

Matt

W Abucewicz wrote:
I've inherited a server from a previous consultant..
The SBS 2003 Server has 2 IDE drives with no redunancy.
Can I somehow add/convert this accident waiting to happen to
RAID 1?
I think that I should...
--Pickup a SATA raid controller and a couple of identical SATA drives
--Ghost/Image the IDE drive onto this newly created RAID disk
--Remove the IDE drive
--Keep my fingers crossed and hope it works..

Any advice? Looking for success stories and nightmare stories..

W Abucewicz


.

Relevant Pages

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