can't boot from mirror disk

[Mark Kirkpatrick]

I have Win2k3 running on a DL360 with the two internal SATA drives mirrored (with Windows disk management). The boot.ini has both drives defined and I can boot from either one as long as they both are plugged in. If I pull the secondary drive it boots ok, but if I pull the primary, I get to 'Attempting Boot From Hard Drive' and the boot process hangs. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[chongkan]

Hi Mark

Would you try to remove the primary driven and then place the secondary drive in the first drive place? or are you leaving the drive in the same place after removing the othr drive.

I'm not sure but maybe since this drives are not hot-pluggables you may have to change the drives position.

Regards

[Mindaugas]

Fragment from MCSA Training Kit:
If the drives are attached to IDE controllers, and the primary drive fails, you may have to remove that drive, change the secondary drive to the primary controller and set its jumpers or cable position so that it is the master. Otherwise, the system may not boot to the secondary drive.

Also read this:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=167045

[Lucky Luciano]

What about using changed boot.ini
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/317526

[chongkan]

Mindaugas is right about the jumpers, just like a common PC

[Mindaugas]

Partially, because on SATA drives Master/Slave jumpers are not available.

[Ernest Ford]

Is there a utility partition on the primary drive? If there is, you need to either create a dummy partition on the secondary drive or swap the drives and create the utility partition on the second drive.

You need to ensure that both drives have identical partition sequences.

What happens is the boot.ini file points to the same partition on both drives, when in reality it is the second partition on the primary drive and the first partition on the secondary drive.

[Mark Kirkpatrick]

Thanks for the quick responses!

I've tried moving the secondary drive to the primary drive's slot and had the same result. Also, these drives are SATA so no primary/secondary or jumpers to mess with as far as I know.

It doesn't seem to be a boot.ini problem since I can boot from the secondary with no problems as long as I don't remove the primary. I'll double check for any utility partitions, but don't think there were any (don't think my current boot.ini would work if there were).

[Jojo Pornebo]

Mark,

Did you ever get this resolved. I have the exact same conditions that you got. Please e-mail direct also to jpornebo@prideindustries.com

TNX.

JP

[Jojo Pornebo]

Mark,

Did you ever get this resolved ? I have the exact same conditions that you got. Please e-mail direct also to jpornebo@prideindustries.com

TNX.

JP