DL-380 G3: Moving a broken-system disk to other DL-380G3

[iDOn_1]

Hi all,

I have 2 DL-380 G3's with 2x36.4GB ultra320 sets on raid 1 with SA 5i controller. One of them have a crashed on its systems (w2k). I have tried everything (I guess so *) to recover the systems to back online. But I'm stuck with it now. "Whatever you do, the data should be recovered first!", my bos said so.

Now I want to do something else, but not sure about this. If I move one of disk from a broken-system machine to another machine, is it applicable? is it destructive?

Any reply or advise would be highly appreciated.

* old post: http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=992829

[Ruslan]

You can try without any problems :) There is 2 MIRRORED hard drives, therefore you can insert only one disk and verify that system is stable on new hardware platform. I advise you to boot in SAFE MODE, at first time. After checking system log and remove all errors, you can recreate RAID-1.

[iDOn_1]

Ruslan, thanks for your prompt reply.

"Without any problems" means no possibility of lossing data? Can I still read all data from the disk?

"therefore you can insert only one disk" meaning removing the disk from a well-running machine and changes it with disk from a broken-system machine? what kind of errors will occur at this point?

How if I insert the disk to another bay??

Sorry for the questions, but I'm a new to this machine as well as the problems, and my bos voice's is still logged in my head giving me a nightmare during this week. :))

[Ruslan]

"Without any problems" - one disk for experiments, other keep on safe place. Yes, you still read all data from the disk, from second disk.

>>"therefore you can insert only one disk" meaning removing the disk from a well-running machine and changes it with disk from a broken-system machine? what kind of errors will occur at this point?

Remove all other disks from bay, except from damaged server disk. It possible that Windows reinstall drivers of hardware components, change ip address, therefore boot in safe mode and verify this process manually.

>>How if I insert the disk to another bay??
There is hot-plug mechanism with mounted rails on hard drive. Push the button on left side and release a disk from a cage.
Sorry for the questions, but I'm a new to this machine as well as the problems, and my bos voice's is still logged in my head giving me a nightmare during this week. :))

[Scott_59]

You didn't state whether this was a disk or OS crash so let me assume for a moment that it was an OS crash. In that case if you have enough space on the disk, install windows again into a folder called winnt2 then boot the machine and determine what you want to recover from the crashed install. If you do fix things, you'll need to modify the boot.ini to get it to boot back to the old winnt. Sample recovery steps: (study them beofre you use them)

Boot your system with the Windows2K Install CD, let the system boot into the Setup. Once in the Setup, choose to run the Recovery Console.

You will now be presented with a screen similar to good old DOS.

At the prompt, type the following command:
chkdsk C: /f
Replace C: with the letter of your system drive.

Once it is complete, reboot your system as normal and it may possibly come back to life. If not,

1) Start recovery console
2) fixmbr â to fix master boot record on system partition
3) fixboot â writes new bootsector onto the system partition