C:\ Drive failed - Recovering data from other disks

[GuySmiley]

Hi,

I suspect that the primary C:\ drive on my windows 2000 server has failed. The server has 2 other IDE disks connected to it internally and a powervault storage array with roughly 10 scsi disks attached to it externally (using an adaptec SCSI card and cable). If I remember correctly, the disks on the storage array were configured to act as one giant disk using the Win2k Disk manager. I don't really care about the c:\ drive, since it just contains the OS and a few other vanilla files. However, I really need to access the data on the storage array and the 2 other internal IDE disks.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions on how to go about doing this? I have a few other similar machines to work with, I just need to know the steps.

Any help you can provide would be *tremendously* appreciated!

-Guy

 

[Jontmke]

Are you saying the server had a disk array, but not a mirrored drive for the OS? Are you sure that one or both of the other drives are not part of a Raid configuration?

Anyways, If you take the scsi card and the disk array with it, out of that box and put it in another one with 2000 on it, it should be recognised. The volumes might not have the same drive letters assigned but so what.
Same for the other IDE drives, put them in another box and see what it says.

Jon

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. (Bertrand Russell)

 

[JohnCitron]

GuySmiley,

I just went through this recently on a Win2k system of my own. I was able to remount the RAID using Win2k Disk Management. The Striped set showed up as an unknown volume and I was able to select it and remount it.

See the Microsoft Knowledge Base Article - 222189

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;222189

for the full details, but specifically they say here:
Connecting disks to a new computer:

After you physically connect the disks to the new computer, click Rescan Disks on the Action menu in the Disk Management MMC utility. When you physically connect a new Dynamic disk, it is displayed in the Disk Management MMC utility as Dynamic/Foreign.

"Importing" Foreign disks:

"If you move one Disk Group to another computer that contains its own Disk Group, the Disk Group you moved is marked as Foreign until you manually import it into the existing group.

To use Foreign/Dynamic disks, use the "Import Foreign Disks" operation associated with one of the disks. The manual operation lists one or more Disk Groups, identified by the name of the computer where they were created. If you expand the details on a Disk Group, it lists the locally-connected disks that are members. Click the appropriate Disk Group, and then click OK. You can then view the dialog box that lists volumes that were found in the Disk Group, along with some indication of the status of those volumes."

....


John

 

[GuySmiley]

Hi John,

Thanks for the info! I spent the better part of the day doing process of elimination testing on the various disks and confirmed that the system disk was shot. I was able to transfer both of the internal IDE disks as well as the SCSI storage array over to a different machine and everything was picked up/imported successfully using the disk manager. So, a year's worth of logfiles and webtrends reports haven't been lost (I do have back-ups of these, too). Fortunately, the failed disk is still under warranty, so I just have to sit tight and wait for the new one to show up. And then spend the next two days reinstalling the operating system and software back to its original state...

-Guy