Swap Hard drives

[Ayman Altounji]

The DL360 has two hard drives, one mirrored to the other (using Compaq hardware). I want to take the secondary drive from one server to an identical server (which is the exact same software and hardware configuration) and make it the primary (the second server crashed after installing some software). Can I do this and if so, how? All help is appreciated!

[Ayman Altounji]

I've never tried that - and don't think it'll work... Taking both over is not an issue, but one of a set and, I assume, a blank drive...

All I can say is, backup before even trying it.

[Ayman Altounji]

This is what I have been doing to quickly build NT Terminal servers w/ Citrix Metaframe. It should work for you.

You have two servers A and B, and two mirrored drives, 1 and 2, in server A. Take server B and with the same smart start CD used to reate server A, use the system erase on server B to bring it to an unconfigured condition.

Power server B up with the Smart Start, and run through the screens until you get to where you can choose between assisted and manual configuration. Choose manual configuration and select you NOS that you are using on the server, allow the server to configure the hardware.

After the selection of the primary boot device, which should be the array controller, you are asked to hit to reboot the server. After hitting the key the Smart Start will start to load the Array config utility. Power the server off at this point.

Power down Server A and remove drive 2, and put drive 2 into server B. Power Server B up, and then be sure to remove the Smart Start CD.

When you see a prompt to hit "F10" to enter the ROM Array config. utility, hit "F10", you will see a screen and about half way down that screen there should be an "X" where it says " RAID 0 Drive no fault tolerance" Hit "F10" twice to save the settings.

This will create two identical servers on your network. YOU WILL NEED TO TAKE WHATEVER STEPS ARE REQUIRED TO MAKE YOUR SERVER B A UNIQUE SERVER!!! If you are using NT you will need to change the SID's or you will have problems.

You will need to replace the drive in server A or you will have to hit "F1 to continue" every time you reboot.

Use at your own risk. Good Luck!

RM.

[Ayman Altounji]

Probably not recommended by Microsoft - Not what we'd call a standard proceedure, but there's a lot of ways to do any job - this is pretty inventive! (but not recommended as a normal course of action).