dynamic disk to basic to rebuild RAID

[plainlanguage]

Someone suggested this as a good forum for this question.

Long story short, running MS SBServer 2003 on an Asus MB with Intel
ICH6 running SATA RAID 1. The primary (and only) partition was/is a
dynamic partition. One disk failed and I replaced and tried to rebuild
at bios level but it wouldn't so had to demote the raid array so system
would boot and run.

Intel Matrix Manager won't rebuild a dynamic disk array from within
Windows. Intel e-mailed me instructions for converting the disk to
basic using dskprobe.exe which I did. System was weird for a bit but
chkdsk /f a couple times seemed to fix it.

HOWEVER, Intel Matrix Manager still says system disk is dynamic disk
and won't rebuild raid. Disk shows up under My Computer just fine but
doesn't show up under Computer Management / Disk Management at all
(just not there).

I'm perplexed.


Any ideas???

Thanks!

-Eric

 

[plainlanguage]

Update-

The disk DOES appear in computer management but shows as "dynamic" and
"offline". I tried right clicking and converting to Basic (with some
serious worry about the consequences). It then showed a small 8MB
partition in the Disk Manager until reboot then reverted back to Disk 0
- Dynamic - Offline.

I've decided I'd like to just put it back the way it was if possible
and image this drive using Acronis and just redo the system from
scratch. Is that possible?

Thanks.

-Eric

 

[Peter]

The disk DOES appear in computer management but shows as "dynamic" and

"offline". I tried right clicking and converting to Basic (with some
serious worry about the consequences). It then showed a small 8MB
partition in the Disk Manager until reboot then reverted back to Disk 0
- Dynamic - Offline.

I've decided I'd like to just put it back the way it was if possible
and image this drive using Acronis and just redo the system from
scratch. Is that possible?

How much data you have on that server?
Do you have backups? I guess no.
Perform additional NTBACKUP, just in case.
Then rebuild, restore and test.

 

[plainlanguage]

10-20gigs of hard data and good NTBackup and Acronis images daily.
What I'm worried about is the change in the dynamic disk bit and I
always prefer to restore from an image rather than go for the hope and
pray restore from the NT backup.

Acronis claims is restores all disks in basic mode and then you can
reset as dynamic in Windows. Does this mean it doesn't archive the LDM
partition and thus I don't need to worry about the changes I made with
dskprobe.exe?

Posts other than the predictable "hope you have a backup" are
appreciated.

-Eric

 

[Peter]

10-20gigs of hard data and good NTBackup and Acronis images daily.

What I'm worried about is the change in the dynamic disk bit and I
always prefer to restore from an image rather than go for the hope and
pray restore from the NT backup.

Acronis claims is restores all disks in basic mode and then you can
reset as dynamic in Windows. Does this mean it doesn't archive the LDM
partition and thus I don't need to worry about the changes I made with
dskprobe.exe?

Posts other than the predictable "hope you have a backup" are
appreciated.

Well, the safest would be to get (at least temporarily) two new disks to
practise restore. Disconnect current ones (don't forget to label), connect
new ones and restore. Restore from Acronis image first, if that fails -
reinstall Windows and restore from NTBackup. In worst case scenario you end
up where you are right now.