Software Mirrired (RAID 1) Raid

[hamish]

Hiya

I have set up SBS2003 with two hard drives with the system/boot parition (C:) mirrored. If both hard drives are present, then it will boot fine. If the primary drive is missing, then it will not boot. The error I get on the screen is No Operating system found.

I think that maybe the MBR on the secondary drive has not been set up correctly. Do I need to alter the boot.ini script when I have the system drive mirrored?

THank you

Hamish

[jaclaz]

Yes, it is possible that the MBR on second drive is missing.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/141702/en-us

Boot.ini should be OK, as Arcpath actually should point to first drive (and the second one should become first if the first one is removed), but adding a second entry to boot.ini to experiment should not be a problem, which could however be the master/slave problem.

You can use MBRFIX:

http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.htm

http://www.sysint.no/Nedlasting/MbrFix.zip

and (optionally) my small GUI for it:

http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.net/index.html

http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.n...X/mbrfix0.2.zip

to check and fix the MBR.

Still, you might have a problem with disk signature/drive letters assignment when booting Windows.

jaclaz

Edited February 16, 2007 by jaclaz

[hamish]

Thank you very much . I'll have a look.

H

[Stoic Joker]

Chances are (Given the error) the partition is not set as "Active". If I recall correctly you should be able to use Fdisk from a Win9x boot floppy to set the active partition flag on a Non-DOS (NTFS) partition.

Just a Thought

Stoic Joker

[jaclaz]

Chances are (Given the error) the partition is not set as "Active". If I recall correctly you should be able to use Fdisk from a Win9x boot floppy to set the active partition flag on a Non-DOS (NTFS) partition.

Just a Thought

Stoic Joker

Yes, that is exactly what can be done (together with other things) by the MBRfix app linked to before, which runs under 2K/XP/2003. No need to boot into DOS.

jaclaz

[Stoic Joker]

Chances are (Given the error) the partition is not set as "Active". If I recall correctly you should be able to use Fdisk from a Win9x boot floppy to set the active partition flag on a Non-DOS (NTFS) partition.

Just a Thought

Stoic Joker

Yes, that is exactly what can be done (together with other things) by the MBRfix app linked to before, which runs under 2K/XP/2003. No need to boot into DOS.

jaclaz

True ... but being that he is trying to boot RAID1 with the primary drive removed and getting an OS not found error. I assumed that he was exploring his recovery options and would be needing something to boot to (at that point) to complete the scenario.