Replacing a mirrored drive

[2know]

I'm new to a company that has a Compaq Proliant 800 server at a satellite office runing Novell Small Buisness Suite 5. This server has mirrored 9GB drives and one of them is making a very loud noise. Coincidentally the netwok has slowed down also. I feel that if one of the drives is not bad it is going to be bad very soon.
I want to replace the drive and am wondering the best way to go about this. Any suggestions.

 

[Lou0686]

Hi,

It all depends on wether it is software or hardware mirroring.

If it's hardware mirroring:

Note: Before doing this, verify that your RAID controller supports it.

1. Down the server.
2. Remove the faulty drive.
3. Replace with a new drive (same size or bigger).
4. Bring server back up. The drive will rebuild itself.

If it's software mirroring:

1. Down the server.
2. Remove the faulty drive.
3. Bring server up.
4. Break the mirror (In nwconfig, you will see out of sync set - select this - you will see in sync and out of sync devices. Delete the out of sync device from list).
5. Down server again.
6. Add new drive (Same size or larger).
7. Bring server up.
8. Re-establish the mirror (Careful with this step - Unlike NT, you can mirror the wrong way with Novell and wipe out your data).

Good Luck
Lou

 

[2know]

I replaced the second drive and created a Netware partition exactly the same size as the primary drive and Netware mirrored the drive just fine. Thanks for your help!

Feeling good that I didn't mirror over the primary drive I later realized that I never created a dos partition or compaq configuration partition for the second drive to boot from if the primary drive dies. I'm no better off at this point.
How should I go about getting the second drive in a position to take over for the first drive if it fails?

 

[Lou0686]

HI again,

Glad to hear that the mirroring worked out. Now to get DOS on the secondary you only have one choice that I know of, and that is to break the mirror and start from scratch.

But....you may want to call PowerQuest's pre-sales support and inquire about their Server Magic software. This is software is great for moving/modifying/migrating partitions and volumes. But I don't know if it will allow you to add a DOS partition to a drive who is already mirrored.

Lou