Can't boot from drive after ghosting and mirroring

[Tim Jones]

Hello all,

<preamble>
I had last week the enviable task of upgrading a Windows 2000 SBS server to
new hardware running the same OS (not upgrading).

I had no luck following the MS guide - the server failed to boot after doing
an authoritive restore of the directory.

I decided then to ghost it, encountering some issues along the way (did you
know that an HP ML530 doesn't support IDE hard drives on its internal
interface? I sure didn't!). The Dell computer and the HP had different PCI
buses, so I couldn't take the RAID card from one machine and put it in the
other either.

I went out and purchased a PCI IDE card, and was able to copy across the
data to it with Ghost boot disks, put the disk in the ML530 (with the new
PCI card) and boot up fine.

I then set up software mirroring between the disks - so far so good. I did
not ghost the disk as the PCI card was not native and not getting picked up
in the DOS session.

I then came back in a couple of days later to remove the IDE drive... guess
what?
</preamble>
<problem>
The SCSI array would not boot.

I went through and ran the recovery console, did FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. Ran the
automated recovery tool. Left it booting off a floppy in the end.

Now, I think that the Dell partition on the IDE disk that was Ghosted over
was what was the boot partition there - but the new disk should be able boot
shouldn't it?

It boots fine with a boot floppy.
</problem>

Does anyone know what I can do?

I thought of looking at partition magic - can that help this sort of
problem?

I also thought of going back and reghosting the whole thing all over again,
with the Dell partition - erg!

Thanks,

Tim Jones

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Hello all,

<preamble>
I had last week the enviable task of upgrading a Windows 2000 SBS server to
new hardware running the same OS (not upgrading).

I had no luck following the MS guide - the server failed to boot after doing
an authoritive restore of the directory.

I decided then to ghost it, encountering some issues along the way (did you
know that an HP ML530 doesn't support IDE hard drives on its internal
interface? I sure didn't!). The Dell computer and the HP had different PCI
buses, so I couldn't take the RAID card from one machine and put it in the
other either.

I went out and purchased a PCI IDE card, and was able to copy across the
data to it with Ghost boot disks, put the disk in the ML530 (with the new
PCI card) and boot up fine.

I then set up software mirroring between the disks - so far so good. I did
not ghost the disk as the PCI card was not native and not getting picked up
in the DOS session.

I then came back in a couple of days later to remove the IDE drive... guess
what?
</preamble>
<problem>
The SCSI array would not boot.

I went through and ran the recovery console, did FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. Ran the
automated recovery tool. Left it booting off a floppy in the end.

Now, I think that the Dell partition on the IDE disk that was Ghosted over
was what was the boot partition there - but the new disk should be able boot
shouldn't it?

It boots fine with a boot floppy.
</problem>

Does anyone know what I can do?

I thought of looking at partition magic - can that help this sort of
problem?

I also thought of going back and reghosting the whole thing all over again,
with the Dell partition - erg!

Thanks,

Tim Jones

You did not say how far the boot process goes, and what messages
(if any) you get. Your Windows environment is obviously correct,
so perhaps you need to set your boot partition to "active".

 

[Marshall Lai]

And make sure when you ghost, you copied the boot track.....

 

[Tim Jones]

And make sure when you ghost, you copied the boot track.....

The boot track was OK, because I ghosted it onto the IDE drive and the IDE
drive worked fine.

The problem came up when I mirrored the IDE drive with the SCSI array - the
Dell boot partition did not come across (which I think was booted first).

I cannot think why after doing FIXBOOT and FIXMBR the system still can't
start off the drive.

When it starts up, it just goes through

Trying to boot from CD...
Trying to boot from Floppy A:...
Trying to boot from C:...

(or something along those lines)

Cheers,

Tim

 

[Tim Jones]

How do I set the active partition in 2000? I am running dynamic disks -
there is no option in disk manager. Does partition magic allow for this? DOS
FDISK?

Thanks,

Tim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pegasus (MVP)" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.win2000.setup,microsoft.public.win2000.setup_deployment,microsoft.public.win2000.setup_upgrade,microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 11:59 PM
Subject: Re: Can't boot from drive after ghosting and mirroring

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

DOS fdisk.exe will no nicely.

How do I set the active partition in 2000? I am running dynamic disks -
there is no option in disk manager. Does partition magic allow for this? DOS
FDISK?

Thanks,

Tim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pegasus (MVP)" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.win2000.setup,microsoft.public.win2000.setup_deployment,mic
rosoft.public.win2000.setup_upgrade,microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 11:59 PM
Subject: Re: Can't boot from drive after ghosting and mirroring

 

[Tim Jones]

DOS fdisk.exe will no nicely.

Will that work for a Dynamic Disk? It turns out that that is my problem,
because I though I should be able to mark it in Disk Manager as active
before and couldn't see the option.

It turns out upon reading up that Windows 2000 will not allow you to mark a
dynamic disk as active, you have to create it as a basic disk first, set it
as active THEN change it to dynamic.

Doh, doh, doh!!!

Will see if I can change it over...

Cheers,

Tim

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Will that work for a Dynamic Disk? It turns out that that is my problem,
because I though I should be able to mark it in Disk Manager as active
before and couldn't see the option.

It turns out upon reading up that Windows 2000 will not allow you to mark a
dynamic disk as active, you have to create it as a basic disk first, set it
as active THEN change it to dynamic.

Doh, doh, doh!!!

Will see if I can change it over...

Cheers,

Tim

I don't know much about dynamic disks but I thought that a
boot disk cannot be a dynamic disk.

 

[Tim Jones]

I don't know much about dynamic disks but I thought that a
boot disk cannot be a dynamic disk.

A boot disk can be dynamic, only if it is made a boot disk *before* it is
converted to dynamic...

Unfortunately, I had to convert the disk to dyamic to allow for software
mirroring *shrug*.

I will try to ghost the Dell array onto the disk and set *that* as the
active partition and see what happens *gulp*.

Tim

 

[TimeTraveller]

Point 1. you cant Mirror a BIOS partition using windows software raid, the
problem will be that the Arc path on the working disk will be PARTITION2 on
the drive
The same arc path on the Mirrored drive will not work as it now needs to be
changed to Partition 1

Solution is to either ghost the manufacturers partition to the drive then
mirror the partitions afterwards.
or
Create a Fault Tolerant Floppy with a modified BOOT.INI when you need to
boot to the 2nd half of a Mirror

Point2 - you should not mirror to different sized drives even worse if they
are also different drive types IDE/SCSI

Use 2 of the same drives when mirroring of the same TYPE and SIZE

TT