How to mount Non-Bootable Harddisk with Data

[Paul Mai]

I've got a 4GB Harddrive with Data that I am trying to mount as an additional Harddrive on a C240.

How do I go about it without removing data on this additional Harddrive?

Thank you

[Thierry Poels_1]

hi,

have a look at vgimport.

good luck,
Thierry.

[Bill Hassell]

The assumption is that the disk came from another HP-UX system and was managed as a volume group. If the disk is not from an HP-UX system, there is no way to mount the disk. You can use SAM and the volume group section to scan for inactive volume groups. Be sure the disk has a different SCSI address than anything else on the bus. ioscan -kf will help.

[Paul Mai]

Thanks for replying and the suggestions.

Here's the full story:

This external Harddrive is from a HP-UX filesystem.

However, it was first configured as an additional Harddisk (HD) space to the main HD residing on another UX machine.

In other words, it was used to increase the overall disk space allocated to vg00.

Now the main HD on that other UX machine is no longer functional, so I am planning to move this additional HD to the C240 with the hope that whatever data that used to reside on this additional HD can be recovered.

I went into SAM -> Disk and Filesystems -> Volume Groups. When I tried to add the additional HD either to vg00 or a new volume group, it gives me the error: "Although this disk is currently not part of any active LVM volume group, there are old LVM data structures on the disk. If the disk is added, the old LVM structures will be overwritten and it will not be possible to recover the data currently on the disk. Do you want to continue and add this disk"

Looks like in order to add the additional HD, I've got to delete all existing data on it...

[Thomas Bianco]

This disk is a part of a LVG, you will be unable to import this disk without the rest of the VG it used to belong to.

If you attach both disks, you can use VGImport to make the old VG active on the new system, then mount the logical volumes within.

You can think of a VG as a puzzle that is spread across 2 tables (disks), without all the pieces, none of the data makes sense.

It should be noted that if you can import the VG, you might be able to save the data from the portions of the disk that are not bad. I recently recovered 8 out of 9 partitions on a 2 disk VG that had bad sectors on one of the disks.

If your root volume is bad, but the rest of the volumes are good, you could save your data this way.

[Patrick Wallek]

Paul,

Do NOT try to add the disk to an existing VG. Instead choose the 'IMPORT' option to try to import this disk as a new VG. Since the other disk that was a part of this VG is not available, you may have a hard time importing this disk, especially if there were LVOLs that spanned BOTH disks.

An easier way even than using SAM:
(This assumes that your disk is c0t2d0, if not substitute the appropriate disk device file -- This also assumes a new VG of VG03)

# mkdir /dev/vg03
# mknod /dev/vg03/group c 64 0x030000
# vgimport -v /dev/vg03 /dev/dsk/c0t2d0

This will generate some messages as to what LV's were imported and whether or not the import was successful. If it was then you can do:

# vgchange -a y /dev/vg03

Then just create directories and mount the LVOLs from this disk.

Good luck.