Adding Mirror to IDE System/Boot Volume - arcpath Statement

[Jay Bollyn]

(I have not found much in google about this.)

I have added a second IDE HDD to a win2k3 server (non-production network used for training). This HDD is the second drive on the first IDE channel, with the first HDD on that channel as the system/boot volume.

I used Disk Manager to add the mirror. Just before the sync started, I got the following error dialog, while the sync continued (and finished successfully):

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Logical Disk Manager

Logical Disk Manager could not update the boot file for any boot partitions on the target disk. Verify your arcpath listings in boot.ini or through the bootcfg.exe utility.

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Does this mean I should manually edit boot.ini, and add a arcpath statement, pointing to the mirror volume on the HDD I have added, something like:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Windows Server 2003, Std - MIRROR VOL" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptOut

So let's say HDD1 failed to boot. Boot.ini would still be displayed at boot, because copy #2 of boot.ini would be on the mirror volume. So I just select the MIRROR volume, and the server boots.

Is this the way it would work?

Thanks for any info.

- Jay

[Ivan Ferreira · Accepted solution]

Yes, you should manually add the entry for the new disk to boot if was not added. But it should be added, i don't know why didn't worked. The entry syntax and values are correct.

Now, the problem with IDE software RAID is that if one disk block on the disk is bad, the morror will get staled. IDE software raid didn't worked well for us.

[Jay Bollyn]

thanks, Ivan