RE: Change Tracks Per Sector on system Partition

Hi Rob,

I am just writing to see how everything is going. If you have any updates
or need any further assistance on this issue, please feel free to let me
know. I am glad to be of assistance.

Have a great day!

Steven Wang
Microsoft Online Partner Support

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>From: v-stwang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Steven Wang [MSFT])
>Organization: Microsoft
>Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 15:03:49 GMT
>Subject: RE: Change Tracks Per Sector on system Partition
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>Hello Rob,
>
>Thank you for posting.
>
>>From your post, my understanding of this issue is: You have problems
>mirroring system partitions of a cluster to an offsite SAN due to
differing
>sectors per track between the local and remote disks. If this is not
>correct, please feel free to let me know.
>
>Based on my research, this error is only displayed for two reasons:
>
>1. We cannot physically read the file system boot sector (mbs) usually at
>sector 32 or 63 on a single partition drive.
>2. The Sector we did read does not have the 55AA signature as the last two
>bytes of the sector.
>
>If your software mirror a Windows NT/2000/2003 operating system partition
>that is on a disk that is translated as 63 sectors per track (63spt) to
>another disk that is translated as 32spt, then the partition table entries
>used to boot are not properly configured to boot if the shadow drive is
>configured as the primary boot drive.
>
>I would suggest we refer to the following steps to see whether the issue
>can be resolved:
>
>Solution 1: Enable drive translation for disks >8gb in the system BIOS -
>this will change the default translation from 32spt to 63spt and allow the
>mirroring to work without making any changes to the disk partition
manually.
>
>Solution 2: If you cannot enable translation or the drive remains being
>translated at 32spt. We may use the Dskprobe utility to modify the disk
>partition table. The Dskprobe utility is included in the Windows Server
>2003 Support Tools, you may download it from the following link:
>Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 32-bit Support Tools
><http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=6EC50B78-8BE1-4E8
1
>-B3BE-4E7AC4F0912D&displaylang=en>
>
>The partition table will most likely look like the following in
>dskprobe.exe - where # is some variable number that changes from
>configuration to configuration:
>
>Boot Indicator System ID Partition tabel Index
>SYSTEM NTFS / or DYNAMIC Volume Partition 1
>
>Starting Head Ending Head
>1 ###
>Starting Sector Ending Sector
>1 32
>Starting Cylinder Ending Cylinder
>0 ###
>Relative Sector Total Sectors
>63 #######
>
>Change the STARTING SECTOR to be 32 as seen below:
>
>Boot Indicator System ID Partition tabel Index
>SYSTEM NTFS / or DYNAMIC Volume Partition 1
>Starting Head Ending Head
>1 ###
>Starting Sector Ending Sector
>32 32
>Starting Cylinder Ending Cylinder
>0 ###
>
>Relative Sector Total Sectors
>63 #######
>
>This is because the BIOS uses the starting CHS values to locate the boot
>sector.
>
>Hope the above information helps. If anything is unclear or you have any
>concerns, please feel free to post back. I am glad to be of assistance.
>
>Have a nice day!
>
>Steven Wang (MSFT)
>Microsoft CSS Online Newsgroup Support
>
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>--------------------
>>From: "Rob Jeffrey" <technet@xxxxxxxxx>
>>Subject: Change Tracks Per Sector on system Partition
>>Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 09:43:14 -0000
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>>
>>I am having problems mirroring system partitions of a cluster to an
>offsite
>>SAN due to differing disk geometry between the local and remote disks;
>More
>>specifically the tracks per sector is different, 32 on the local and 63
on
>>the remote disks.
>>
>>The system setup is as follows:
>>A two node MSCS cluster running Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition
>>Each node has two local physical disks using hardware RAID 1+0 (10)
>>The shared disk storage for the Quorum and Data partition is a Raid 5
SCSI
>>JBOD
>>
>>I am using Veritas Storage Foundation to perform a software mirror of all
>>disks to our offsite location. This works for all disks except the
system
>>partition which fails due to the difference in tracks per sector on these
>>disks. I have checked disk on other (non clustered) servers and the TPS
>is
>>always 63.
>>
>>Why are these partitions set to 32 and how can I change this?
>>
>>BTW: I used the array diagnostics tool and diskpar.exe to access the disk
>>geometry.
>>
>>
>>
>
>

.

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