Broken RAID advice please

[petrosky]

Hi,

I have just removed one half of a raid array because the machine was caught in a boot loop (long story...)

I want to put another drive into the array...rebuild the array, clean format and reinstall windows 2003 sbs.

My question is this...will I be able to recover Active Directory and the exchange store from the original half of the RAID 1 array?

Please say YES.

Thanks for any help you may have.

Peter.


Remember- It's nice to be important,
but it's important to be nice

 

[PHV]

removed one half of a raid array
???
which level of raid (hopefully raid5) ?
how many drives removed (hopefully only one) ?
the raid is build on how may drives (hopefully at least 3) ?

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ181-2886

 

[ShackDaddy]

Yes, you can recover from a single half of a mirror (RAID1). You should just be able to boot from a boot floppy that was formatted on Windows 2000/2003 and has a boot.ini file on it that designates the proper disk as the location for the bootable disk. If you can determine what your old boot.ini file looked like, then the one that is on your floppy would look similar, but would point to the other half of the mirror.

The existing path in your boot.ini file might look like this:
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

The new one might look like this:
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS

Here are some links:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141702

http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/asm/mbr/bootini.htm

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Building-Using-Windows-XP-Boot-Disk.html

BTW, XP and Windows 2003 Server work almost identically as far as the bootup/boot.ini environment are concerned.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[petrosky]

Hi thanks for your help and links.

Just to extrapolate further.

After replacing the board the machine booted up. Windows allowed me to login and it detected new hardware etc.

In windows the 2 drives were seen as separate. IE. C and D both with 2 partitions (from the original mirror RAID1) Upon reboot after hardware setup...the machine went into a boot loop...

I was planning to get one half of the raid working (IE booting) then rebuild the array...this is not happening due to what may be corrupy AD. The server will not boot to any mode...even Directory Services restore mode.

Hence I wish to clean install and back up the data from the other drive.

Regards,

Peter



Remember- It's nice to be important,
but it's important to be nice

 

[ShackDaddy]

For starters, take one of the mirrored drives out of the server. See how things work that way. You've probably already tried this. If one doesn't work in this arrangement, try the other one.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[petrosky]

Hi ShackDaddy,

I have tried both drives with no success.

Regards,

Peter.

Remember- It's nice to be important,
but it's important to be nice

 

[ShackDaddy]

First, I'll say that you SHOULD be able to recover from this situation and boot to one of the drives.

The unknown for me is what actually happened after you booted in after the motherboard was replaced and the system identified the drives. Obviously something changed at that point.

Check out this article:

http://www.jsifaq.com/SF/Tips/Tip.aspx?id=11021

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting