Mirrored Volumes, Booting, and Windows 2000

[Ron Sochanski]

On a Dell machine with two pluggable hard drives running
Windows 2000 Server, I mirrored the C: volume onto the
other hard drive, and then broke the volume into two
separate volumes, C: and E:. I then tried booting the
machine using the created volume E: (i.e., the hard drives
were swapped) but was unsuccessful (the machine POSTs but
goes no further). Why can't I boot the machine from the
other volume?

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Ron

There are several possible reasons. This is from MSKB 329707:

"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 drive letter that is assigned to the manually broken mirrored
drive is assigned the next available drive letter and is a permanent record
in the LDM database. This means that no matter 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."

You say that your computer stops after POST, meaning that you didn't create
a MBR on the disk (the MBR isn't mirrored), before setting up the mirror.
This is probably why you won't get beyond POST.

This is also why you haven't seen the problem described in the MSKB yet,
you haven't solved the first problem to get that far.

Best regards

Bjorn

 

[Ron Sochanski]

Bjorn:

A couple of quick questions.

(1) I know you said permanent, but is there any way to
modify the drive letter in the drive's LDM database?

(2) How do I put a Master Boot Record (MBR) on the drive?

Thank you very much for responding!

Ron

 

[Bjorn Landemoo]

Ron

1) I am not aware of any way of editing the LDM database directly. If you
manage to install Win2000 on a computer without using the drive letter C,
it might be possible to move the disk to this computer, and just change
drive letter there.

2) Use the Recovery Console command FIXMBR

Best regards

Bjorn