RAID 1 recovery

[gaus]

This is not just a Win 2000 Server question, but a Win 2000 question. When running RAID 1, since the purpose is redundancy and recovery, if a drive fails, what steps do you take to:
1) begin using the mirrored drive that did not fail?
2) once you replace the failed drive, get it 'mirrored back' (get data from drive that did not fail back to new drive)?

I was wondering if, once you replace the failed drive, do you need to use something like Norton Ghost to get the new drive immediately back in sync with the other drive with all of the data?

Thanks!

 

[dholbrook]

You need to create a boot diskette to be able to boot to the other half of the mirror (the non-C: side) if the C: drive is the one that failed. Format a diskette under the windows explored, then copy the boot.ini file and all the NT*.8 files in the root level (ntldr, ntdetect, etc.).

Having done this, you then need to modify the boot.ini file on the diskette to point to the partition and drive the other half of the mirror resides on. Use DiskManager to find out this information. Do this before the system fails if at all possible so you cn test it to see that it works. Otherwise, when the mirror fails, then system will still run on the other half of the mirror, and you MUST create this disk ASAP and be very sure your drive and partition information is correct on the diskette before you try rebooting to the remaing half of the mirror.

To recover the mirror you need to replace the failed drive and rebuild the mirror. You can move the drive that has the remaining mirror to the position which was occupied by the original C: drive and put replacement in its place, in which case you will not need the boot disk (the remaining part of the mirror will now be C. Otherwise replace the drive and boot from your modified floppy.

If the mirror was not broken before or after it failed, the system may begin the rebuild by itself after you replace the failed drive. Otherwise you may need to boot to the mirror piece, break the mirror and then create the mirror from scratch using the old mirror drive as the starting point.

Note: The original mirror was from C: to D:, and unless you move the surviving mirror drive to the C: place, the new mirror will be from D: to C:, which is a little diffent, but not a problem. However the boot.ini needs match the actual drive location, partition, etc. and the original boot.ini file (a copy of which is on the remaining miirror) is looking for the OS to reside at the C: system partition (also not a problem if this is the only partition on the drive).

You may need to adjust the boot.ini if the system does not come up after you create the new mirror and both parts of the mirror do not reside in the first partition on each drive, but the boot disk you made will let you boot back to the old mirror half and do the mod needed to the boot.ini to correct this.

HTH,

David

 

[gaus]

Thanks very much!!!