Migrating to new disks won't boot (DL380 g3, 5i controller)

[Mikkel Moe]

Hi, I'm having a little migration migrane here..

There is a 380G3 with an Array 5i controller in my hot and noisy server room.

And in this server there is an Array A (72GB) and the new Array B(148GB) with one logical disk each. I have copied all 3 partitions from one array to the other using Acronis Disk Director.

After copy I pulled out the disks from Array A, and tried booting but the server would not boot from the new Array B. I did not delete the former Array A so I could stick them right in if something went wrong (which it did :).

Do I have to delete Array A to boot or is there something else I'm missing here? I was looking for a boot priority setting for logical disks in RBSU (BIOS), but did not find one.

Thanks if anyone has a clue here, would be much appreciated.

[Robert Rushford]

Mikkex,

I think that you may havn't set the patitions to be bootable so the server can't boot

I would recommend that you download a partition manager like this one and check

http://www.ranish.com/part

This CD is also good http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Rob

[Mikkel Moe]

Thanks Rob,

All partitions were copied as they were, with boot settings, active and primary flags intact. This should be a spitting image of the disks we're cloning and that's why I suspect the disk controller.

I have done a lot of theses copies without problems earlier with non RAID SATA disks.

[Igor Karasik · Accepted solution]

Mikkel,
AFAIK there is no way to boot from Array other than Array A. So, you need to delete Array A and then your Array B (148GB) automatically will be become Array A.
I think you will be able back to your Array A (72GB) if something going bad because Array configuration stored on the disks as well and when you put Array A disks back SmartArray controller will read configuration from disks.

[Mikkel Moe]

Thanks Igor, Deleting the other arrays allowed booting from the new one. But new complications arose..

There is another array on the server, containing user data. Problem is this:

When it stands alone, the new boot array is named array A and has a logical drive 3.

When the user data array is inserted, it automatically takes the array A name and degrades the other to B, and the server will not boot. So, I can start the server, but only with one array.

Is there a way to force the naming of the data array "Array B"?
Is this happening because the new boot drive is logical drive 3?

[Igor Karasik]

Mikkel,
sorry, I have no idea how to do it without deleting/recreating your user data array.
But I hope something else will have suggestions.