Breaking and using a mirrored drive

[Guest]

Well, the worst has happened. My server went face down in the dirt and won't
get up again. Using the recovery methods available in Windows Setup tells me
that the Fast Recovery method is not going to work. Trying to make a
parallel installation in the old C: partition tells me that the partition is
corrupt in some way even though the disk scanning utilities from Dell say the
drive is just fine.

Can anyone point me to a Knowledge Base article that gives you step-by-step
proceedure to using the mirrored drive that I've set up on my server? Is it
as simple as unplugging the old first drive and telling the SCSI controller
to boot off of the second drive? This is my last hope of getting the old
system back, otherwise it's delete and recreate the old partition.

Thanks.

 

[Guest]

Trying to get on the corrupt drive can be tricky, if you boot from CD and try
to use the recovery console you may not even see (c...if you can...then try
to the fixmbr cmd or fixboot. What is a parallel install? Ive never heard of
that...What exactly happens when you boot face down in the dirt? Yes if you
had a mirror setup, just make the working HD SCSI ID 0 and boot from there.

 

[Guest]

Hi Nick,

Thanks for the laugh. After a week of this I sure needed it.

I have, indeed, changed the mirrored drive to address 0 but booting requires
creation and use of a boot disk, which I've done. I can boot into the
server's OS now BUT in order to break the mirror set and make the new C:
partition active I need to get into the Computer Management console's Disk
Manager function. Computer Manager comes up but when I click on Disk Manager
nothing comes up in the right hand panel. This may be some corruption that
snuck in before the original C: partition crashed. Is there a way to do this
from the command prompt? If not, could you or anyone else out there, tell me
if performing a recovery installation from the OS installation CD restore all
the necessary files (Disk Manager for example) AND make the new C: partition
active and bootable?

I also found that there is a \Windows folder in the new C: partition. Is
this some kind of alternative OS to boot into that Microsoft does for you
when you create a mirror set?

Oh, parallel installation - that's a term that was used by one of the Dell
techs earlier this week. He meant to say that, if the original C: partition
was still intact, run the OS installation program to perform a new
installation but change the target system folder to something like \Winnt2 or
the like. This would allow you to still get to all the files in the original
partition but you'd still be starting over reinstalling DNS, DHCP and
everything else you have had running on the server.

And >>...What exactly happens when you boot face down in the dirt?
You get a lot of grass and dirt in your teeth. Not a pleasant experience
at all.