Serial ATA Removable Backup / Win 2003 S / Not working right

[Ed Cayce]

Hi folks,

I am a little new to newsgroups (well, I was on them 15 years ago
but... anyway) and hope that someone here can help me. I did a little
searching and could not find an answer here.

My plan was to move from doing tape backup to using disk-based backup.
I use Veritas Backup Exec 9.1 on an office file server and it supports
backup to disk. So, I figured, get a removable hard drive enclosure,
and some SATA drives and I can hot-swap them and back up to them. I
got a KingWin KF-91-BK SATA removable enclosure for this. The server
did not have SATA so I bought a Silicon Image 3112 SATA card. I also
got 3 160 GB WD drives,

It all works, but has some problems that make it hard to use, and I am
wondering if anyone has solved these in the past?

1) To make sure data is all written to the disk, you have to go to
device properties in Device Manager, and "disable" the drive before
turning the key to remove it. Then you have to "enable" it after
inserting a new one. This is not a huge problem but is not as easy as
pulling out a tape and pushing in another one. It would be nice to
have that "safely remove device" option that you have with USB/Smart
Card drives, or even better, turn off write caching completely.

2) When I put in the first drive, ater enabling it, Disk Manager
allowed me to partition it and format it and assign a drive letter
(F. If I remove it and put it back in, it shows up with that letter.
However, if I insert another drive, and partition/format/assign
letter, as same letter F:, and pull out second drive and insert the
first one, it is no longer assigned a drive letter! I have to go and
set it to F:. And then this narfs the second drive's letter
assignment. This is with the drives being "basic" disks - if I use
"dynamic" disks, it doesnt work at all.

I have worked around #2 by assigning each drive a different letter.
This sucks however, because there are only so many free letters, and
also, configuring the backup jobs in BackupExec is messy when each
media folder is on a different logical drive.

When you have a USB removable drive, none of these issues happen.

Has anyone come up with a good solution to this in the past? Is there
a way to convince Windows to treat my SATA controller as a removable
device? Or am I just going down the wrong path?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Peter]

If you want your backup operations to be unattended (beside swapping SATA
drives), I assume your backup runs on a schedule basis.
Why don't you script mount/dismount operations and put them in a task
scheduler?

 

[Ed Cayce]

Hi Peter, I appreciate the response.

I am unfamiliar with mount/dismount from the command line - I can use
this to both "enable" the drive and assign a drive letter? Is this the
"diskpart" utility? I am looking over its command help now but am a
little unsure as to what to do.

Thanks again for your help

Ed

 

[Peter]

I am unfamiliar with mount/dismount from the command line - I can use

this to both "enable" the drive and assign a drive letter? Is this the
"diskpart" utility? I am looking over its command help now but am a
little unsure as to what to do.

fsutil volume [dismount] VolumePathname

 

[Ed Cayce]

Thanks Peter.

Ed

 

[Ed Cayce]

Peter,

I see docs for using fsutil to dismount a volume - but it doesn't say
anything about mounting one. Is there another utility for that?

 

[Ed Cayce]

Peter, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

FSUtil did not seem to work - It said I could us it to dismount, but
not mount... and the dismount didnt seem to do anything.

I got this working with diskpart.exe. I have 2 batch files,
"mount.bat" and "dismount.bat" which do the trick. They also share and
unshare a folder on the drive, and the dismount.bat does a chkdsk /x to
make sure that there are no open handles on the volume. Anyone know a
better way to do this?

mount.bat:
diskpart /s mount.txt
net share rembackup=f:\rembackup /grant:"medtek\domain users",full

dismount.bat:
net share rembackup /delete /y
chkdsk f: /x
diskpart /s dismount.txt

mount.txt:
select volume 3
assign letter=f

dismount.txt:
select volume 3
remove


Question: I am not 100% sure that the "dismount" operation actually
flushes the write cache to ensure no data is lost. Anyone know if it
does, or if not, what will?

Also, is there a better way to make sure there are no open handles on
the volume other than chkdsk /x ?

 

[Peter]

Peter, thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

FSUtil did not seem to work - It said I could us it to dismount, but
not mount... and the dismount didnt seem to do anything.

Yes, you are right about mounting. Diskpart is better for that.
But dismount works as designed. Problem is that OS automounts it if
required...

I got this working with diskpart.exe. I have 2 batch files,
"mount.bat" and "dismount.bat" which do the trick. They also share and
unshare a folder on the drive, and the dismount.bat does a chkdsk /x to
make sure that there are no open handles on the volume. Anyone know a
better way to do this?

mount.bat:
diskpart /s mount.txt
net share rembackup=f:\rembackup /grant:"medtek\domain users",full

dismount.bat:
net share rembackup /delete /y
chkdsk f: /x
diskpart /s dismount.txt

mount.txt:
select volume 3
assign letter=f

dismount.txt:
select volume 3
remove


Question: I am not 100% sure that the "dismount" operation actually
flushes the write cache to ensure no data is lost. Anyone know if it
does, or if not, what will?

Also, is there a better way to make sure there are no open handles on
the volume other than chkdsk /x ?

That was my suggestion:
fsutil volume dismount <volumedriveletter>:
It closes open handles and flushes cache to disk.

Better way would involve volume names rather than hardcoded volume numbers
and drive letters. It might be a challenge though...

 

[Ed Cayce]

Hmm Peter I am not sure I was doing it right. When I typed "fsutil
volume dismount f:" I got... nothing. It didnt respond with anything
just a c: prompt. And I look, and the F: drive is still there. Are
you saying that, it is just immediately re-mounting it after I do that?
How do I keep it from doing that?

Thanks again for the help

Ed

 

[Peter]

Hmm Peter I am not sure I was doing it right. When I typed "fsutil
volume dismount f:" I got... nothing. It didnt respond with anything
just a c: prompt. And I look, and the F: drive is still there. Are
you saying that, it is just immediately re-mounting it after I do that?
How do I keep it from doing that?

Well, drive cache is flushed, handles closed. You can safely remove volume
with diskpart, I guess.