Re: SBS 2003 software mirror problem

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Steven,

The Dell server has SCSI disks, not IDE. My friend tried swapping both
disks' physical position in the server (hot-swap drives) which changes the
actual SCSI ID depending upon the slot in which it is installed. No
difference...still will not boot.

Booting off of floppy works for either drive. Remember that Drive0 is the
one that failed and was replaced a month ago. After he re-mirrored from
Drive1 to Drive0, doing the C: partition first to make it the first
partition, Disk Management shows:

Drive0
Partition1=System (C:) > Partition2=Data (D:) > Partition3 is unused 102MB

Drive1
Partition1=Data (D:) > Partition2=System (C:) > Partition3 is unused 102MB

In that setup, what is preventing the Drive0 from booting? It has the ntldr,
ntdetect, and boot.ini files on it, but the server just hangs, unless he
boots from a floppy. It is as though the server does not see an active disk
partition. Is there a way to mark a dynamic disk as the active partition?
From my Google searches, it looks as though you cannot mark a dynamic disk
as active within Disk Management. What about with a Win98 boot disk and
fdisk to mark it active? Would that hurt the dynamic disk?

Thank you for helping!

Gregg Hill






"Steven Zhu [MSFT]" <v-stezhu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:ja5vTFuiGHA.5720@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Gregg,

Thanks for posting here.

From your post, my understanding on this issue is: you cannot start server
from hard-disk but only from floppy after you repair the mirror on the
server. If I am off base, please feel free to let me know.

Based on my knowledge, I suggest you try the following steps to re-create
the mirror to solve this issue:

1. Please refer to this knowledge base article to replace a failed mirror
with a new mirror on another disk:

http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/Library/72c7fdee-97d5-4476-bc
5e-a859d8b49a931033.mspx?mfr=true

2. In addition, try either of the following methods:

a. Configure the jumper setting configuration to master on both the DISKS
and connect Disk1 to Primary channel and Disk1 to Secondary channel.

b. Configure DISK1's jumper setting to master and DISK0 to slave and
connect it in single IDE channel.

NOTE:

- The Windows Server 2003 system and boot files must reside on the same
volume to be mirrored.

- Never break a healthy system disk or boot dynamic mirrored volume and
expect the mirrored drive to replace the original primary drive if it
fails. The manually broken mirrored drive is assigned the next available
drive letter, and this is updated to the permanent record in the LDM
database. This means that regardless of what position that drive takes in
the boot process, it is assigned the new (and incorrect) drive letter, so
the operating system cannot function correctly.

Additional information:

317526 How to edit the Boot.ini file in Windows Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=317526

323433 HOW TO: Establish a Striped Volume (RAID 0) in Windows Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=323433

302969 How To Mirror the System and Boot Partition (RAID1) in Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=302969

I hope the above information helps.

Have a nice day.

Best Regards,

Steven Zhu
MCSE
Microsoft Online Partner Support
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