Lost my scsi card, change to another but won't boot!!!

[klabaza]

Hi people.

Today we had some problems with the Energy at Otay Mesa, CA, but we didn't get at time to our servers room to shutdown the servers, our NT Server lost the scsi chip + 1 scsi HD(Raid-1).

The chip is integrated (adaptec AIC-7890), i insert one PCI SCSI card 29160 chip, which detect just one HD, i think i lost the other disk, now i change inside my scsi setting to boot from the only HD that is working(ID 1).

The Windows NT boot scream appear, but is not passing from the blue scream, the one that show you the info about:how processors, RAM size, the system stop working.

Can recover my NT server if i change my scsi card? Does some know if i have options here or if i can fix this?

Thanks all for your time!!!

 

[Griffyn]

I don't think you can just plug a new SCSI card in - Windows NT won't have the correct drivers for it. You need to try and get at least one of the drives up and running. If you can't manage that with the hardware you have or can get cheaply, a way around it would be to mount the good drive into another running system, then Ghost it across to a new IDE drive. You should then be able to put the new IDE drive into your old NT box and boot from it - you may need to change the boot.ini file though. I'm pretty sure Windows NT always loads the IDE/ATA drivers.

After you have booted from the IDE drive, you can install the drivers for the new SCSI card you want to run, then do the reverse, mount back into the previous PC, Ghost back to the original SCSI drive, and then you should be able to plug that back into the original box and boot from it ok, and then re-establish the mirror if you want to.

 

[Griffyn]

Another way would be to install NT over the top, and having the new SCSI drivers on a floppy disk - press F6 when prompted during the initial load screen. I try to avoid doing this when possible just in case it clobbers anything.

I highly recommend getting a Ghost of the drive before you start playing around, otherwise one false move and your server is damaged or gone for good.

 

[klabaza]

Yes, i was thinking that, the drivers. About the Ghost stuff, this are not IDE drives, this is SCSI can i use Ghost between a SCSI and a IDE driver?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Griffyn]

Urm, hadn't considered that. If you're using an XP system as the intermediate PC, you could definitely use Partition Magic, as it allows for partition copying between drives, and can handle those volumes.

 

[klabaza]

Update.

First, i already backup my critical files.

Well, i clone my HD to a IDE drives twice, but none of them work, my original + my 2 clone disk they boot, but none of the past from the blue screen the one that show u the ram size, processor, 1 IDE drive went get there, reboot the server.

Ok, latter i install the original HD on another server that has the same SCSI chip integrated, and wow my systems was running, here i install the drives for the new scsi card, everything was cool, them i plug my original HD to the new card is this server just you test, and again my system, was running.

If i boot this server using the IDE drives, none of them past again from the bleu screen, and 1 disk reboot my server.

Now my HD has the scsi drives for my new card, i test the HD in the original server, but no success, again i didn't past from the blue screen.

I don't now, if i break the mirror from the disk, could i lost something? because if i boot in the other server, i have the choice to break the mirror, this can the problem?

To clone the disk i use TrueImage Workstation 9.1, i did this from windows XP Pro.

Any tips welcome, i already install WinNT4 fresh install in 1 new scsi disk, but i don't want to lost this battle.

Thanks all for your help.