Re: SBS 2003 + SATA + failing software mirror

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Is there any way to tell wether the new disk0 is still 'active' even after I've deleted the interim partition from it ?

This appear to be the bit where this is falling down at the moment.



"SuperGumby [SBS MVP]" <not@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:uylbQwceJHA.1188@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
You don't need FAT. (can't help it. OK, most US citizens do, but then, I'm getting a bit 'portly' m'self these last few years :-)

This is one of those times that I think people who write MS KBs never actually use the processes they describe.

I think some of the errors you encountered in testing were due to proceeding too quickly (hence on one attempt it fails, a 2nd try works). Slow down and let the system account for change (ie. make change, come back after coffee).

Software RAID SUX.

"Jim" <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:gl0ffv$14gk$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hmm..this is pretty vauge isn't it..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/323432/en-us


Seems to indicate that you have to mirror twice over ?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/120227/

Mind you they're talking SCSI and NT 4.0...

But I'll give it a go..hold on..what's this..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/167045/en-us

Seems to indicate that you make a small bootable FAT partition and leave it on the disk..as opposed to deleting it..

..actually when you wanted me to make a partition earlier...did you mean FAT or NTFS ? ....the partitions I created and subsequently deleted as per your instructions were both NTFS and not FAT....

I'm going to try again but with FAT this time..






"Jim" <jim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:gl09cf$q60$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Create a standard MBR boot sector on the 2nd drive. (your replacement drive)
I normally do this while the drive is in 'basic' format, only changing to 'dynamic' after. It's simple, just create a primary partition of any size, you can even 'quick format' it. I don't do this enough (preferring hardware RAID which does not require these steps) and cannot remember whether you will then also be able to make the partition 'active', if you can, do so.

OK, I disconnected my drive 0 to simulate a failure, I then downloaded WDC Lifeguard and did a zero fill on it to make it look like a new drive 0.

I then booted up with it connected to the #1 connector and then booted to the shadow drive 1 connected to #0 connector using the boot floppy. All OK so far..

I removed the missing drive mirrors and ended up with drive 1 ( the original shadow) as disk0 with three healthy simple volumes.
I then created a partition on the new 'basic' drive 0 at disk 1, used the entire drive quick format and then set it to active and then did a re-boot.

Following the re-boot I then attempted to delete the partition from new drive 0 - disk 1
I got two error messages when I tried to do this...
First time it said it wasn't possible to delete the partition.
I tried again and then got an error saying something about the Logical disk manager was trying to restart.
I then tried a third time and it sucessfully removed the partition.

I then converted the new drive 0 to dynamic and then sucessfully re-mirrored all thee partitions from drive 1

I then shut down and disconnected drive 1 ( the original shadow) from #0 connector leaving just the new drive 0 on the #1 connector as per your instructions..removed the boot floppy and attempted to boot.....

...it didn't :-(

Just boot looped as before.

I'm guessing that it is trying to use the secondary plex setting to boot as the new drive 0 is actually still connected to #1 connector.

The boot.ini main entry would be pointing to multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1) at this stage I think..

Secondary plex is currently pointing at multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)

As nothing is connected to #0 connector I guess it now uses the secondary plex option ?

The BIOS displays the drive as connected to SATA port 2 ( which is the second SATA connector, which we are reffering to as #1 connector..)

I'm suspicious of the errors that I got when attempting to remove the basic partition.

I'm going to try again..and see if I get the same errors.

OK, I've tried again, I made an 8GB partition this time, quick format and set it to active.
Then did a re-boot and then deleted it, no errors this time, wonder why they occured the first time...

Then just in case it needs to do something MBR wise following the deletion of this partition I re-booted again.
Then I converted new drive 0 to dynamic and then re-mirrored against the three partitions on drive 1 again.

Shut down..disconnected drive 1 from #0 connector..
Removed the boot floppy.
Now trying to boot to new drive 0 on #1 connector on it's own.....

...uh...nope...still doesn't work..

obviously something going wrong with this MBR ability to boot thing..

Have you tried this with a SATA arrangement ?

Like I said before I tried yesterday with SCSI drives and it worked exactly as expected.

Is there maybe something different regards SATA , MBR and Disk Manager ?









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