ML110 G5 - software mirror primary failed

[Jim D R Smith]

Hi all,

I'll try again now I've a bit more to go on.

ML110 G5
Windows 2003 R2 SP2
2 x 250GB SATA
Windows software RAID1 mirrored

Primary drive has failed and needs replacing.
When primary is pulled the server will not boot to the secondary (mirror shadow) drive.

It will with the aid of a Boot Tolerant Floppy via a USB floppy disk drive.

Re-mirror from secondary (mirror shadow) to the new replacement primary drive..OK thus far..

Remove floppy, the server will still not boot, not even from the new replacement primary.

Have checked out MS KB167045

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/167045/en-us

Have followed some of the advice in this article..it still won't boot. It'll only boot to a boot floppy.

Have tried this on a second ML110 G5 by setting up a similar scenario, same thing still will not boot to either the secondary or the replacement primary once the original primary has been pulled.

Created exactly the same scenario on a Dell PowerEdge server with exactly the same make and model SATA hard drives...interestingly this works without any problems whatsoever.

..so this doesn't appear to be a SATA issue as I first thought.

Appears to be an issue with the ML110 G5 by the looks of things.

I've called ProLiant Business Support, but as it's a software RAID issue they said they are unable to help.

That said it would appear that it a hardware related problem seeing as exactly the same setup on a different server of very similar hardware spec works perfectly.

I've upgraded to the latest BIOS and tried again..still doesn't work.

Anyone any idea what is going on ?

I'm fairly sure that the MBR is being initialzed on the secondary drive.

Thoughts anyone ?