topic Change HDs Raid1 NetRaid3Si in Netservers

Change HDs Raid1 NetRaid3Si

Eidam — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 06:52:10 GMT

Hello all,

i have an old NetServer LH Plus with 2 2GB harddisks mirroring connected to a NetRaid 3Si. On the other channels more HDs are connected with Raid5. NetRaid Assistant is installed.

Now I want to replace the 2 2GB HDs with the Windows2000 Server installtion on with 2 4GB HDs.

Is there a chance to replace theese disks without a new installtion of the OS?

Data on the other disks (Raid5) should also not be overwritten.

Thanks for help.
Guido

Re: Change HDs Raid1 NetRaid3Si

Jonathan Rosen — Tue, 07 Dec 2004 22:12:11 GMT

I'm not familiar with your particular Netserver, but the drives on mine are swappable fairly easily. i am assuming this is the case for yours as well.

I would mount the new 4gb drive you want to move the OS to alongside the current OS installation. Then copy the entire disk currently housing the OS to the 4gb disk that you want to migrate Windows to.

Then pull all of your other drives except the 4GB one you copied Windows to. Attempt to load windows from the 4gb drive you copied the OS to. It most likely will not load (but if it does, then your problem is solved.)

If Windows will not mount from the drive, then put your Win2k CD into the CD drive, and when it boots go to repair and repair the installation on the new 4gb drive. This will make sure that the boot sectors are in the right place, and should make the new 4gb partition bootable.

Then attempt to boot from the 4gb drive. This seems like the easiest way to migrate without reinstalling to me.

I should note though, that if it were me, I would just reinstall Windows on the new 4gb drive. Unless you have so many programs loaded and configured in tedious ways that this would be too time consuming, I always find that a fresh install of Windows helps for system stability.

-Jon

Re: Change HDs Raid1 NetRaid3Si

kris rombauts — Wed, 08 Dec 2004 03:08:10 GMT

Guido,

the method explained above won't fully work since the removal of the 2 * 2 Gbytes disk would leave you with an Netraid error message at startup and the server will not automatically reboot but each time stop at POST and Windows will also still show this disk but you can't read/write to it.
Their is also not a complete way to copy a running OS completely onto other disks as several files are always open and cannot be copied (or you need to copy the OS disks offline with imager s/w).

Their is no way one can delete a logical drive out of the Netraid configuration except when you start from the last logical drive down to the first logical drive which was created in the beginning, you can't delete the very first one on it's own (2* 2 Gbyte raid1) , this is a limitation of most PCI based array controllers and not specific to the Netraid.

What you could do is replace each 2 GByte disk with a 4 Gbyte disk one at a time and let it rebuild online (rebuild twice, once per disk change from a 2 into a 4 Gbyte disk). The "only" disadvantage is that you will end up with a logical drive which is still only 2 GByte in size and not 4Gbyte because the Netraid will only rebuild the original capacity of the raid set (which is 2 Gbyte).
If this is a solution for you, you could create a second logical drive (2 Gbyte remaining space) in the remaining unused space and create a new disk drive on it in Windows (new drive letter) and maybe move your swap space and temp files to their as to free up disk space on the current c:\ drive.

If however you need to have a bigger c:\ drive then either :

- Windows reinstall with 2 * 4 Gbyte in
raid 1
- capture a Windows OS image and restore
it with some imager s/w like GHOST
onto a new raid1 set of 2 * 4 Gbyte that
you create to replace the 2 * 2 Gbyte
raid 1 set.
For this you need to clear the Netraid
config and recondifure the remaining
disks in the raid5 with exactly the same
parameters and don't initialize that
second logical drive (raid 5) but only
reconfigure it with the same parameters,
this way no data is lost at all.
Or remove the raid5 disks when you clear
the config and once the OS is up and
running with the 2*4Gbyte disks, insert
them again and at boot up the Netraid will
detect them and you can import the raid5
again.
In any case nothing happens to the raid5
data.

HTH

Kris

Re: Change HDs Raid1 NetRaid3Si

Michael Lashinsky — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 09:10:39 GMT

I have a Netserver LH Plus and a Netserver 5/166 LS2. I am attemping to set them up to run Windows 2000 server. I want to use them for studying Win2k and MCSE. I have rebuilt the raid 5 arrays and loaded Windows 2000 server, but when they finish loading and try to boot for the first time to configure itself, it give me an error message, "A disk read error occurred, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart". Any suggestions?