SCO VirtualDisk Question????

[doctorj227]

I've just picked up a client that is using SCO Virtual Disk on their server. It is SCO Openserver 5.0.6 and they are mirroring, dual drives, so there are 2 drives. Well I have never used the Virtual drive package, I've also used hardware based mirror/raid. Anyway the mirror drive crashed, so I replaced it, I run mkdev hd on new drive, create a partition for unix, I do not add any division tables, per message that states to not create any division tables if using for vdisk. Oh there are 3 divisions on drive root,swap, and boot. I can re-mirror the boot, but when I remirror the root, the process takes about 90 minutes and when it gets to 99%, the process dies, I get vdisk out of service, error-log filled. It appears to be some sort of panic, the system then is locked and I can only exit by "killing" the power. I've re-formatted the harddrive , tried another harddrive, but I continue to get same errors, but not until root is 99% completed. I've done this in maintaince mode, when I try this in multiuser mode, the mirror process starts automattically, but the same thing occurs.
Am I missing a step?? Anyone have any experience with the SCO Virtual Disk Manager. I dislike the Virtual DM, this has taken way to long to get going. Kinda defeats the purpose of redundecy if you have to configure new drive before you can re-mirror.
Thanks

 

[apeasecpc]

Is the replacement mirror drive per chance smaller than the live drive? I've never used the product myself, but it sounds like you might possibly be running into the end of the drive. It's just a long shot I know.

I would also recommend hardware mirroring over software if you are going to go that route.

 

[doctorj227]

Thanks for the hd size tip, I'll verify that in fact they are the same size. I agree the hardware raid is the route to go, but I took over this client from some other vendor, and the other vendor implemted sw raid. They also have another vendor that takes care of all thier hw, so he's the one who replaces the hd, but he has no experience on SCO. So, they called me.
Thanks