Can I Mirror an existing HDD w/ hardware mirror?

[lifegard2]

I have a Win2k server runnin on an Intel 845WD1-E motherboard. The MB has a Promise RAID Controller built-in.

When we initially setup the server, we setup w/ a single IDE HDD and no RAID. This HDD is installed on the standard IDE controller on the MB. Now we're ready for mirroring, but I can't get Win2k Server to create a Mirrored Set. Rather than fight Win2k, I think it would be best to use the Promise controller and setup hardware mirroring.

Has anyone ever placed an existing HDD onto a Promise RAID controller and created a mirror without losing the initial data on the HDD? I'd like to avoid reloading the server from scratch.

Also, what's the deal with Win2k Server mirroring? WinNT server was SOOOO easy, this is being a pain in the butt. Any ideas?

 

[nhidalgo]

all you should have to do to create the win2k mirror is upgrade the original disk to dynamic(via disk administrator). install a second hard drive and upgrade it to dynamic then create the mirror by right clicking on the first disk and choose add mirror. i'm not sure about the promise raid controller, but you can usually add a mirror without loosing the source drives data.

Nick

 

[lifegard2]

It does not give me the option of making the system drive a dynamic drive.

 

[amdaxiom]

No need to make your drive dynamic and use software mirroring when you can use hardware mirroring instead. I prefer not to use dynamic drives on my servers at any cost due to issues with repair software possibly not working with dynamic disks as they are pretty non-standard.

Anyways, you have a hardware Promise IDE Controller - make sure the drivers are installed for your Promise IDE Controller before doing anything. It is possible to enable mirroring after the fact, however, both hard drives must be attached to the Promise IDE Controller. It is highly likely that moving the drive from your standard IDE controller to the Promise IDE Controller will require changes to be made to your boot.ini so be sure you understand how to fix boot.ini issues before proceeding. And just in case make sure that you run winnt32 /cmdcons from your I386 directory of your Windows 2000 Server install first if it has not already beend one. Also, take a ghost image of your drive before proceeding as enabling RAID can be very dangerous and you can lose all of your data very easily.

Move both drives to the RAID controller and when the system boots enter the Bios of the RAID Controller (typically it will say hit Ctrl-F). Both drives should be seen as two standalone drives. You will have to create a RAID 1 container. I would do this manually rather than automatically because then you can specify the source and the target. Be very careful here and make sure you specify the correct source and the correct target because it is possible to overwrite your data with an empty drive (which has happened to me before, unfortunately. Thank god for the Ghost image).

After that it will be a matter of hoping that the boot.ini file will be okay. If you get a blue screen saying something about missing c:\winnt\system32\ntoskrnl.exe then that is most likely due to the boot.ini file needing to be changed to specify the different IDE controller. If you ran the winnt32 /cmdcons ahead of time it will be easy to boot to the command console and fix the boot.ini file. I forgot exactly what the command was though.

So basically, don't use dynamic disks as that is only for software raid. Since you have your Promise RAID Controller use that instead as you should see better performance.

Harry

 

[lifegard2]

OI! Why is this stuff never easy. . .

OK, I ghosted the HDD onto a third drive, so no problems there as it works and is my good backup.

I setup the drive I wanted to mirror on the Promise controller, the new drive as well. I was able to get the FastTrak to build a mirror and specify the old drive as the source for the mirror, so that's all good. Now when I boot, I get "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE".

So, I tried tweaking the boot.ini on a boot disk by changing the multi() to scsi(), no go.

I then reloaded the third drive and booted to it. Once that came up, it wanted to install RAID drivers for the FastTrak. I'm thinking this is a problem. This means my mirrored drives don't have the RAID drivers installed.

So, I'm thinking I'll break the mirror and then reinstall the original drive as a standard single IDE drive. Then I'll install the RAID drivers. This brings me to the next question. How will Windows 2000 know to boot from these RAID drivers? Any thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[lifegard2]

OK, I think I got it. Here's what I had to do so if anyone else tries this. . . :

I removed the original drive from the promise controller, placed it back on the motherboard's controller, and left the new drive (the one I wanted to mirror to) connected to the promise controller. I then started the machine.

During startup, the promise controller complained about a critical array, but this was OK because I had removed the original drive from the array. I pressed ESC to bypass this message. I made sure the BIOS on the MB was configured to boot to the MB IDE HDD, then I started up.

Once Windows 2000 Server came up, it detected new hardware, a RAID array. I installed the drivers for the array, then I rebooted. When it came back up, I saw that it recognized the HDD connected to the promise controller as another data drive.

I then shutdown and moved the origianl hard drive's connection from the MB IDE channel back to the promise controller and disconnected the new drive (the one I wanted to mirror to). I rebooted. I figured the array would report a critical state, no biggie since the new drive was disconnected. If it booted after that, then I knew the driver installation was what was needed. It worked.

I shutdown and then reconnected the new drive (the one I wanted to mirror to) to the promise controller. Upon startup, the promise reported the array in a critical state, obviously. I went into the FastTrack utility and deleted the array. I then redefined the array and marked the original drive as the source. Then I had to build the array, this took about two hours (there was only 27GB on the disk, but still two hours).

Once the array finished building, I rebooted when prompted and all was well.

 

[lifegard2]

So, in the future, here's what you should do:

1. Define an array on the promise controller while the original hard drive still sits on the MB's IDE controller. You'll obviously need at least one spare hard drive to make this happen. This array is just temporary and will be deleted later, Windows doesn't see the RAID controller until a RAID is defined (at least that was the case in this instance).

2. After defining the RAID (or mirror), boot into Windows with the original HDD still attached to the IDE controller on the MB.

3. Windows should detect a new RAID controller. Install the RAID controller software when prompted. Reboot when prompted.

4. When the machine finishes rebooting, make sure you can see the original system drive (which should still be connected to the IDE channel on the MB.) Also make sure you can see the drive defined as the RAID array as a separate drive within Windows Explorer. If all is OK, shut down.

5. Disconnect the spare drive from the RAID controller and move the drive connected to the IDE on the MB (the one you wish to use as a source drive in the mirror) to the primary connection on the RAID controller. Be sure the drive you wish as the TARGET drive in the mirror is connected to the secondary channel on the RAID controller.

6. Boot up and enter the fast track utility. Define the array being sure to mark the proper SOURCE drive as the source when prompted.

7. Build the array.

8. Reboot when prompted.

9. Quick Test - There may be a quick way to test this before building the array (building the array can take some time, mine took 2 hrs for 27GB). To do this, try defining the array, but not building. Shut down. Disconnect the mirror TARGET drive. Turn the machine on. The controller will report a critical state for the array and that it's only running on one drive with fault tolerance disabled, but that's OK. If the machine boots up into Windows at this point, then you've successfully loaded the RAID drivers and you should then go back and build the array (you may have to delete it, redefine it, and then build it).

Hopefully this saves others the day or two I've spent on this.