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NT4 Server Must Use Boot Disk
Name: Peter Walach Date: October 29, 2002 at 10:34:22 Pacific OS: NT 4 Server CPU/Ram: PII-400 256MB RAM
Comment:
The main NT server at our office has three 9GB SCSI hard drives. We have NT installed on a 2 GB partition on the first drive and this partition is mirrord onto the second drive. We also have a 14GB Stripe Set With Parity using the remaining space on the three drives. We had a problem several weeks ago whereby the first SCSI Hard Drive failed. We were unable to boot without a boot disk after this happened. We broke the mirror and installed a new SCSI hard drive as the first drive. Then we booted using the NT boot disk and re-established the mirror, and regenerated the stripe set with parity, however we are still unable to boot the server without a NT boot disk. How can we get the server booting normally again without having to use a boot disk?
Name: michael Date: October 30, 2002 at 00:40:03 Pacific
Reply:
I'll assume that NTBOOTDD.SYS is on the HDD and is a copy of the correct SCSI driver.
Take a look at the MBR (and the boot sector while you're at it) with Disk Probe. Also make sure the partition is active. The repair procedure for NT will NOT remake a MBR. Neither will a partial or full installation of NT. Blew off my latest Linux installation and tried to for the last 2 hours - who needs sleep. Win9x's fdisk /mbr would redo the MBR, as would the fixmbr in XP/W2k's Recovery console.
Not that I have seen it mentioned anywhere, but mirroring a drive does not mirror the MBR (not sure of the boot sector, but it should).
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Response Number 2
Name: Gerardo Date: November 1, 2002 at 15:31:17 Pacific
Reply:
Edit your boot ini to reflect changes. Copy the boot.ini you have on the floppy disk to your boot partion.
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