Windows server 2008 R2 Software Mirror 1 setup

flames1000

Hi All,

Im setting up a windows server 2008 R2 box as a play around box. I have 2 sata drives in it and i converted the drives to dynamic and mirrored them with the windows software raid 1. Nothing critical is on it.

The PC being used is a Dell Optiplex 960, The mirror seems to be fine until i power it off and pull the power on the main drive that orginally has the O/S installed on, i dont even get to the bootscreen to choose the secondary plex option to boot to the other drive. All i get is a black screen with a blinking cursor.

If i plug the drive back in, all is good. If i check in disk management, it says the drive is missing even after plugging it back in, so i remove the mirror drive and delete the volume and all is good.

All im after is how to make the 2nd mirror drive boot if the first drive that holds the o/s goes down. I think im doing something wrong, or its a gotcha! Looking around on the internet, i have not seen anything too much that will help, or im looking in the wrong place.

So i thought i could ask here

Any info will be great!

Thanks

Flames

SWM

I dont know that model Dell, but suspect beause you are performing a software mirror, rather than a hardware mirror by a dedicated RAID card, the bios is not aware that it now needs to boot from the second sata drive rather than the missing first drive.

So, reconfigure the software mirror, shutdown, remove the first drive then renter bios and configure the boot order.
Goodluck:)

flames1000

thanks. It has a raid with intel storage manager on the board, but its not being used. I tried the boot order change and nadda. kinda sucks

undomiel

Disconnect the drive from the board and then try booting, it sounds like it may be hanging up on that.