Learn from me. Set up your RAID before you do anything else.

Posted by timotheus on January 17th, 2008 filed in Random

I’ve spent 2 days working on fixing my web server RAID here at work. Here is what my SATA RAID fiasco was all about.

When I bought the web server from Steve, he made it sound like the RAID 1 was already set up. So I installed Windows SBS 2003, configured the MySQL, PHP, IIS, ODBC.. Days of work. Then I noticed I could see the other blank drive in Computer Management. I went into the BIOS, and saw the SATA as RAID option was Disabled. I figured, no problem, when I have a couple hours to spare, I’ll setup the RAID and mirror the drive over.

A two years later I figure I REALLY should get on this.

Come to find out, you cannot use a drive with an OS installed to use as the ‘master to clone from’ in an array. It will blue screen, because the drive is booting from an unknown controller card.. After much reading, and two 4hr rabbit trails, I figured it out.

-Clone the SATA drive with the good OS install to an IDE drive.

-Unhook the good SATA drive, and put in another blank, so now there are two blank drives in the RAID.

-Enable the RAID card, and boot to the IDE drive.

-Let Windows 2003 Server detect the card, and install the drivers for it.

-Ghost the image of the good OS install from the IDE drive to the blank RAID 1.

-If it boots to Windows 2003 just fine off the RAID, then you’re almost there.

-Break the mirror, and install the original SATA good OS install drive back in there, and unhook your temp drive. Rebuild the RAID 1, writing overtop the good SATA drive.

-Now your original SATA drives are in there for the RAID, with the OS knowing about the RAID controller, and boots fine.

It was a pain. Lesson learned, ALWAYS check to be sure the RAID is set up.