Question about mirrored drives and system partitions

[AceHigh1234]

I'm setting up a photo storage server for my company. The configuration or the drives is:

Primary IDE: 400GB Master, 400GB Slave
Secondary IDE: 30GB Master, CD-ROM Slave

When I went to install win 2k, it made me create a FAT partition on the primary IDE master drive, and then I installed windows to the 30GB master on the secondary IDE channel. Anyway, I didn't really think anything of it, finished installing and whatnot, and went to set things up. I mirrored the free space on the PIDE master with the same ammount of space on the PIDE slave, and just left a bit of the slave drive unpartitioned.

My concern is this. When in Disk Management, it shows something like this:

DISK 0: [C: 2GB(system) ][P: 370GB (mirrored) ]
DISK 1: [P: 370GB (mirrored) ][Unallocated]
DISK 2: [D: 28GB(boot) ][8MB unall]

There is 640K used and no files on the C: drive, and all the windows files and everything are on the d: drive.

If DISK 1 were to fail, I know I could get back my data from the mirrored set using DISK 0 with no trouble.

But, if DISK 0 were to fail, it seems like the system would fail to boot because that system partition would be gone. Then how would I recreate the data? How would I boot the system at all, for that matter?

I don't want to start the install all over. Could I do this:

1: swap the IDE connectors on the MOBO so the 30GB/CDROM is the PIDE

2: Use DiskWizard to format and unpartition the two drives on the SIDE

3: Using the Windows 2k Recovery Console, run fixboot and fixmbr on the boot drive

Would this work?

 

[Seaspray0]

The registry has thousands of entries that point to the D drive. Unless you're willing to start over, the OS will have to reside on D. Since the mirror was created in the OS, you will be able to break it and retain your data. You'd even be able to lose the OS and still retain the data. I don't see many options with the way the drives are partitioned. One thing you could do is perform regular backups of the OS to the mirror. If you do lose the OS, then you could do a reinstall the OS the way it is now, recreate the mirror (you won't lose the ability to read the data) and do a restore from the backup on the mirror.

Start, Help. You'll be surprised what's there. A+/MCP/MCSE/MCDBA

 

[AceHigh1234]

I decided to change the drive configuration a little bit and put the CD-ROM and the 30GB drive on the PIDE and the 400GB mirrored drives on the SIDE and just start over

Thanks for your help