Mirroring and bad blocks

[mugqcwhvxw]

Hi, I'm trying to mirror the system disk of a server with windows 2003.
The process cannot complete because the disk has bad blocks. I cannot
low-level format the disks as this server is very critical and has to
be 24hrs online. Is there any way to mark those blocks as bad and
proceed with the mirroring?

 

[Brian Cryer]

Hi, I'm trying to mirror the system disk of a server with windows 2003.
The process cannot complete because the disk has bad blocks. I cannot
low-level format the disks as this server is very critical and has to
be 24hrs online. Is there any way to mark those blocks as bad and
proceed with the mirroring?

If the server is critical then buy a new disk, schedule some down time and
swap the disk with bad sectors for your new disk.

If its a critical system then you don't want a disk in there with bad
sectors - because disks are generally very reliable and if this one has some
bad sectors then it may have more that you've yet to find or (worse) it
might be on the way out. Disk manufacturers often have diagnostic utilities
for their disks, which you can download from their websites. It would be
worth you checking the disk out thoroughly using the appropriate diagnostic
tools - assuming of course this doesn't require the system to be down (which
it might!).

I know this isn't the response you were looking for, but I hope you find it
useful.

regards,

Brian.