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Frustrated with PowerQuest VolumeManager 2.0 for Windows 2000 Server - no longer trust product at all
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Microsoft Windows 2000 Setup
Frustrated with PowerQuest VolumeManager 2.0 for Windows 2000 Server - no longer trust product at all
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Frustrated with PowerQuest VolumeManager 2.0 for Windows 2000 Server - no longer trust product at all |
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Our primary Ex2K server is a dual 933Mhz Compaq DL380, with both the
embedded SmartArray and an add-on SA5300 controller. The OS is on a pair of 18GB drives connected to the embedded SmartArray and setup as hardware RAID1, and the data volumes are hanging off of the SA5300 with a couple of 4214 cabinets. The problem is the C: partition on the drive is too small, and I need to install Win2K SP3, Ex2K SP3, and a bunch of other stuff. There's another partition on the same drive set which has some space I can steal away. So I purchased, and TESTED, PowerQuest VolumeManager, in hopes of safely increasing the size of the C: drive. I tested it against six other servers, including other Compaq servers with SmartArray controllers (although none of this exact model Compaq - it's the only one of these I've got), and they were all fine, and resized C: without incident. Things weren't so great with this server when I tried to do it. As per recommendation from PowerQuest, I resized C: using the boot floppies their software creates for VolumeManager. The process ran, I rebooted the server, and I got a "invalid boot device" in the middle of the Windows load (after the Windows 2000 Server graphic appeared). I tried everything I could think of, and (at the suggestion of PowerQuest Emergency support - this was at 11am on a Sunday morning!) I ended up doing a Windows Repair process from the Win2K Server CDROM. Amazingly enough, it saved my behind, and the server actually booted. OK, here's the problem - the C: partition was originally 4GB. I was trying to size it up to 6.5GB. Now, when I use the server, the C: drive still shows as being 4GB. However, if I go into Disk Management, it shows it as being 6.5GB. I've reported the problem to PowerQuest, for all the good they were. They want me to go in and manually adjust values in the partition table in order to correct the problem, but they aren't willing to tell me if (since the server is running now, albeit with bad values) if this has some risk and could cause other harm, nor can they explain why the problem happened in the first place. Does anyone have (a) any better ideas how to fix this (no, a chkdsk /f does not fix it), and (b) any REAL ideas what could have caused it. PowerQuest is giving me a lot of B.S. answers about antivirus in the BIOS, etc., all of which don't apply to Compaq systems. At this point, I don't trust VolumeManager at all, definitely won't trust it against an important server like this ever again, I've wasted thousands buying multiple copies of this for my company's servers, and I've found PowerQuest's technical support people to be at best evasive, and at worst totally unresponsive (they've now stopped even bothering to return my email messages). Any suggestions? |
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