NAM 4.1 Disaster Recovery Question

[artfulbodger]

Hi folks....

I am trying to implement a disaster recovery plan here before Hurricane Season becomes official. To make a long story short, I need to have the ability to do a "bare metal" restore of my applications, servers, phone systems, etc.

Here is where my problem comes in. I am trying to clone the HDD in my NAM so that if anything were to happen, I have a perfectly good copy, ready to go - worst case scenario is that a couple voice mails get lost. However, I cannot seem to clone this drive. Everything looks like it is working fine, but when I try to boot, nothing - it just never comes up. The original works with no problems.

I can clone my BCM hard disk (different site) and have that work, but NAM 4.1 is killing me.

Any suggestions?

 

[senk1s]

are you cloning (for backup purposes ONLY) to something the same disc size?

It uses OS/2

You can probably order a disc from your vendor ...

 

[artfulbodger]

Yes, I am trying to do this as a backup. The idea is that I can have a system up and running in the event of a crash or other major malfunction without having my vendor take 2-3 days to come on site. It has all the keycodes and settings and mailboxes I need. Getting a a new one from a vendor will take forever. Besides, it is my company's policy to have clones of every mission critical drive (and this was deemed one of them).

In any event, here are the specifics:

The original drive is a Maxtor 2.5GB. The partition is only 1.999 MB. So the partition "map" looks like a 2 GB OS/2 partition and a 292MB "Unallocated" partition.

I tried a 2.1 GB, which meant that there was just enough space for the OS/2 partition. No "unallocated" space. That drive didn't boot. It went throught (what seemed like) the POST, and then just stopped.

I tried a 4.3 GB drive in which I had a 2GB OS/2 partition and a 1.5GB "Unallocated" partition. The system acted like it didn't even recognize the drive. It just kept rebooting.

Do you think I should use a drive that is exactly the same size as the original?

Just so you know, I am using a forensic utility that allows me to make a sector-by-sector copy of the drive, regardless of the partition or operating system. Suffice to say, my copy is perfect.

If it is a drive size issue, is there an installation CD that I can get so I can recreate it on drives that I have in stock gathering dust? I have tons of 4.3 and 9GB drives but hardly any 2.5's.

Thanks for the help!

 

[serviceboy]

take the part number and order from vendor...or better yet order a refurbished 4.1 nam with the exact same specs and store in a safe place in case of Em

"There are those who would make you believe there are no choices left.That they have the last word and its final.To those who try the world is wide open choices many.To those who dont only death awaits you.

 

[biv343]

What are you using to clone the drive? Only luck I ever had with a NAM was using a product called Diskpro Clone and Recover - it did a bit by bit copy of the drive. This was years ago, not sure if it's even available anymore. It took forever to do, but it worked. Only limitation is the source and destination drives need to be the same size.

 

[artfulbodger]

Thanks for the replies...

While going to the vendor is easy, a "new" drive wouldn't have the mailboxes and keycodes backed up. I imagine that the keycodes could be exported via the floppy (I assume that is what it is there for), but that dosen't solve the issue with mailboxes and recordings (greetings, etc.)

The idea is to be back up and running in minutes, not days.

I have tried Acronis and Ghost - no luck on either front. I even tried a forensic application called Winhex that allows me to do a sector by sector copy of a drive - no luck there either.

I did some research and found that PowerQuest was the only one that could copy OS/2 file systems - since they got bought out by Symantec and integrated with Ghosts, it seems that is a dead end too.

I guess I am down to finding an application that will copy OS/2 file systems. Being that OS/2 has been dead for some time now, this will be a fun adventure....

 

[senk1s]

you can backup all the programming using floppies as well
F983 login 22/33 backup/restore
F915 - like u said to back up license files

'new ' HDD with same SW level adn these 2 sets of floppies will do it.

What is the plan for hardware failures? (thats when serviceboy's idea will be better)

 

[VernonTelecom]

I've actually had huge success in backing up (cloning as you put it) and restoring these hard drives using an older copy of Norton Ghost. Its been a little while since i've done this but here's the basic's.

My process was successful by taking an older computer (Pentium 3 1ghz) with a floppy, IDE controller, 4gb hard drive formatted for use with DOS (or windows 98, as long as its not NTFS) set up as a slave, and a CD, and creating a ghost floppy boot disk which included CD control.

I then took the NAM hard drive out of the unit i wanted to backup, installed it in my "nam backup PC", booted to floppy, and ensured I could see both the NAM hard drive, AND my slave drive.

Once proven - and i never had a problem... - I launched Ghost, instructed Ghost to make a 'local backup - to local image', and choose my slave drive as the destination of the image.
Takes about an hour (at least it did with my NAM drive in my older PC. Once you have completed the backup to image, you can restore the NAM hard drive to its normal home.

The image you have on the slave drive can then be copied in any way you choose. I have mine backed up on a single CD, because the compression allowed the empty space to be removed. That might not be possible if you have lots of mailboxes etc.

Restoration to a new drive:
prep your new drive to be 2.1GB partition and low level format it
Put new drive in "nam backup computer" and boot to floppy
Ensure you can see both the master new drive (empty) and the Slave with your backup image
Run Ghost, and 'restore from image'

I have NAM default images that recognize 2.1GB and 20.4GB drives, and have used them both - so i know it works with Ghost.
I use Ghost 6.5 Enterprise (to do network ghost imaging) and Ghost 2001 for what i've described above.
Marty

Marty Atherton
Vernon Telecom

 

[artfulbodger]

Marty,

Thanks for the info. However, since my last post, I was able to find a BSD Unix utility that does a sector for sector copy of any HDD. Best part is, it is available as a bootable ISO so all you need to do is have a CD-ROM and your HDD. I have a two drive setup so my machine boots and I copy from one HDD to the next. If you only have one, it can upload to an FTP site for safekeeping.

Check it out at

http://unix.freshmeat.net/redir/g4u/13316/url_zip/g4u-2.2.iso.zip

Allan D. Reed

 

[superiortel]

Acronis works well too... and you don't need to find a backpack CD drive for which the OS2 has the drivers.