Recovering data from unbootable harddrive

[Joseph Crawford]

I have an L-Class server with 2 mirrored 18 gig drives. Yesterday, one of the disks crashed. When I try to boot, the system tries to mount the root volume, fails, and then reboots. I've tried booting after removing the bad disk but got the same result. Not sure if the good disk is bootable.

Here's the question...Is there any way to retrieve the data off of the good disk?

Thanks for any help!

[RAC_1 · Accepted solution]

bo alt (From PDC menu-assuming that primary disk has failed)
Also from ISL prompt
hpux -lq
Does it boot??

Anil

[RolandH]

If the system boots then suspend the boot process if the system ask for it.

At the prompt type in

MAIN>sea ipl


This will give you a list all bootable devices.
Boot from your Mirror disk with

MAIN> bo pX

X = the index number of your mirrored disk that was given you from the command before.

Is it now possible to boot the system?
Check this first, please.

Roland

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi,
Well yes if you remove it it mount it as a disk (not LVM) on another server...


I had a similar issue almost 2 years ago when (also an L-class..) after a crash I could not reboot on the disk left and great surprise in maintenance mode found I had nothing on it...
Yes It was mirrored (but when?...) NO idea why/what/who got me in this mess...

You do have an ignite tape aside?

Good luck
Victor

[Joseph Crawford]

Thanks guys! I was able to perform a "sea ipl" and found the bootable disk. I then booted from that path, interacted with IPL, and ran "hpux -lq".

After a few lvlnboot warnings about my bad disk, my system is back up now. Thanks again!

[Joseph Crawford]

Please see previous comment for closure.