How to backup a copy of the RAID5

[Ayman Altounji]

I have this problem of backing up a copy of a RAID5+1Hotspare harddrive. I have 3x 9.1GB RAID5 and 1x9.1GB Hotspare, what I intend to do is to backup the 3x9.1GB RAID5 with 3 spare harddrive, but I failed the process, the system is not able to boot up at all, all it gave me was a NTDETECT Failed error.

Appreciate any help!

[Ayman Altounji]

Your sequence is right. You may want to try a NT repair disk to see if that can get you going. If the repair disk doesn't work, my only other suggestion would be to do it the old fashion way. Backup the data to tape. Put in the new drives, configure the array, then restore from tape backup.

Have a nice day,

Mike

[Ayman Altounji]

We have configure the system to run on RAID5+1 HOTSPARE, meaning, 3 x 9.1GB harddisk on RAID5 and 1 x 9.1GB on HOTSPARE. As we are keen to know how we are able to backup the RAID5 harddisk by using extra 3 spare 9.1GB harddisk. Is there any sequence that we have to follow to be able to do a hot-plug backup? For example if want to do a mirror backup of a harddisk, you would be possible if you configured to run on mirror and by just taking out the 1st disk, and insert a spare HD, you would be able to duplicate an instant of the running disk. So for RAID5, is there anyway to do that?

I have tried to do the following but it failed to boot up properly in WINNT, giving me a NTDETECT failed.

3 x 9.1GB harddisk , 1 x9.1GB hotspare

1) Take out disk 0 and the hostspare kicks in
2) once the hotspare have sync the data, base on the compaq array utilities, we can know that it have completed. we insert a BRAND NEW disk into disk 0, we assume that the hotspare disk will sync all the disk 0 data into the BRAND NEW disk.
3) after it have completed, we take out the BRAND NEW disk and again let the hotspare resync the disk 0, after it have completed we insert back the ORIGINAL disk 0 and let it sync.
4) We have done this until all the 3 disk have the sync to the individual disk0,1,2.
5) Once we have gotten the 3 BRAND NEW disk to sync, we took out the ORIGINAL harddisk and inserted the NEW disk in the correct sequences, apparently it can detects it's RAID partition, but it cannot boot up to WINNT OS, it gave the error NTDETECT failed.

Please help , or comment if our sequence is wrong.

[Ayman Altounji]

I'll need a little more information in order to assist you. How were you attempting this backup? Would you please explain the steps that you took for this process?

Thank you,

Have a nice day,

Mike

[Ayman Altounji]

We have configure the system to run on RAID5+1 HOTSPARE, meaning, 3 x 9.1GB harddisk on RAID5 and 1 x 9.1GB on HOTSPARE. As we are keen to know how we are able to backup the RAID5 harddisk by using extra 3 spare 9.1GB harddisk. Is there any sequence that we have to follow to be able to do a hot-plug backup? For example if want to do a mirror backup of a harddisk, you would be possible if you configured to run on mirror and by just taking out the 1st disk, and insert a spare HD, you would be able to duplicate an instant of the running disk. So for RAID5, is there anyway to do that?

I have tried to do the following but it failed to boot up properly in WINNT, giving me a NTDETECT failed.

3 x 9.1GB harddisk , 1 x9.1GB hotspare

1) Take out disk 0 and the hostspare kicks in
2) once the hotspare have sync the data, base on the compaq array utilities, we can know that it have completed. we insert a BRAND NEW disk into disk 0, we assume that the hotspare disk will sync all the disk 0 data into the BRAND NEW disk.
3) after it have completed, we take out the BRAND NEW disk and again let the hotspare resync the disk 0, after it have completed we insert back the ORIGINAL disk 0 and let it sync.
4) We have done this until all the 3 disk have the sync to the individual disk0,1,2.
5) Once we have gotten the 3 BRAND NEW disk to sync, we took out the ORIGINAL harddisk and inserted the NEW disk in the correct sequences, apparently it can detects it's RAID partition, but it cannot boot up to WINNT OS, it gave the error NTDETECT failed.

Please help , or comment if our sequence is wrong.