Computer question: Cloning a Win2000 SCSI boot drive?

[GH85Carrera]

OK, a question for the computer geeks that remember the olden days.

I have an OLD but perfectly running 1 TB RAID that is SCSI. The computer that runs it is a Windows 2000 system that was a fantastic screaming fast system state of the art for 15 years ago when we bought it.

The main boot drive just runs and and runs. Nothing lasts forever however.

The computer that runs it has an fancy Adaptec controller the AIC - 7899 Ultra 160. It is a total pain to set up and I have forgotten most of my SCSI set ups.

We have spare hard drives just like the boot drive. All I want is a clone of the boot drive that could be swapped into place if and when the 15 year old drive dies.

Is there a simple clone process that will work? I have clone software for my ATA drives but that does not address the Adapatec drivers needed to even see a SCSI drives. I am not trying to clone the 1 TB RAID, just the 160 GB Boot drive.

Any suggestions or guidance will be appreciated.

[GH85Carrera]

Digging around in the cobwebs of my memory I think I remember making bootable copies of drives using Xcopy. It had a lot of switches like /e to copy directories and sub-directories and /h to copy hidden directories.

What string would copy every file to the new drive? Dang I wish I remembered all that stuff. I guess not using Xcopy for 1.5 decades it does tend to fade.

[HardDrive]

I don't recall if Win2000 natively supports raid. If it does, you could slap in another drive and mirror the boot drive.

[GH85Carrera]

The computer already has a second drive that is empty and ready to be the new cloned drive. The challenge is getting any software I can think of to see the Adaptec drivers and the SCSI card during boot. It is a 100% SCSI system.

[cashflyer]

Does Clonezilla work with SCSI?

[GH85Carrera]

I don't know. Only if it can load SCSI drivers as it boots. Whatever OS the clone software uses to boot will have to load the SCSI drivers for the card.

I am trying to figure out how to copy the Master Boot Record and the rest should copy with Xcopy. It is making my brain have to work!

I can't believe I have stumped the Pelican Brain trust.

[GH85Carrera]

I am going to try this command on the computer.

Xcopy C: D:/s/e/h/v/r

With luck that will copy everything necessary. I may still have to figure out how to copy the master boot record.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

[rockfan4]

Only way to make the D drive bootable is to make it the C drive. So, before you copy, make a bootable floppy with FDISK and Format on it. Disconnect your C:, make D: the primary drive and boot from the floppy. FDISK, create a primary partition on the new C:. Then Format C: /s. When the format is done, shut down, put the drives back the way they were and do your xcopy. Then disconnect C again and verify what you did works.

Good Luck.

[beepbeep]

HI,

I do not understand your setup and what you are trying to achieve. Please elaborate on your config. Do you have one physical unmirrored boot drive (C plus additional RAID volume of multiple drives? Which RAID level?

Do you want to make an offline copy of your boot drive to be used in case the original drive dies?




P.S.
I never suceeded using xcopy to mirror the MBR. You need something that will copy on sector leve. Also, if target drive is smaller/bigger the partition needs to be resized. I have sucesfully used an utility called R-drive image which works under OS itself, so it can find the volume (not SCSI drivers at boot time needed).


P.P.S.
if you only have one drive, the best solution is probably creating a RAID-1 volume (mirrored), which will use your existing drive as a source to create a mirrored volume with two drives...

[GH85Carrera]

The system has just one non mirrored SCSI drive that is the boot drive. The RAID is an external 1 TB unit.

I put in a second blank drive and it is seen as drive D: and it is the same size as the boot drive C:

I just want to backup the boot drive and have a bootable replacement.

[John Rogers]

From my days as a DBA working on Windows 2000 servers as far as I can remember we were never able to clone a boot drive, I.E. the C drive with it's MBR and such. While at NASSCO the server group tried to do that and all they ever got was a blue screen. It has been possible for years with Linux and Unix systems and we had a couple folks that were hired in with no Windows experience but lots of HP Unix experience and tried and tried and tried. Finally as part of our recovery procedures had to just admit to doing a new Win 2000 install!

Not surprising, I found a couple paragraphs in Oracle's recovery documentation about recovering servers saying Windows 2000 would require a new install!

If it were me, I would use a spare drive and after shutting everything down cleanly, install a new empty drive and do a fresh install and then put it away for safe keeping.

[beepbeep]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

The system has just one non mirrored SCSI drive that is the boot drive. The RAID is an external 1 TB unit.

I put in a second blank drive and it is seen as drive D: and it is the same size as the boot drive C:

I just want to backup the boot drive and have a bootable replacement.

OK, now I get it. Couple of options:

- Use Windows software RAID1 and just mirror the boot to new drive. It might need Win 2000 Server though

- Check if your Adaptec SCSI card support mirroring, then you can do it in card BIOS or through Adaptec utility. Make sure you chose correct source drive

- If exteral array is also SCSI, move both it to external array (if you have place), create a RAID1 volume from it and mark it as bootable. Make sure you enable SCSI boot in BIOS. This way, you have an automatic failover.

- Install R-drive image, chose disk copy on sector-by-sector basis. (I switched HDD boot drive for SSD without re-installing the OS this way four weeks ago).

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by beepbeep

OK, now I get it. Couple of options:

- Use Windows software RAID1 and just mirror the boot to new drive. It might need Win 2000 Server though

- Check if your Adaptec SCSI card support mirroring, then you can do it in card BIOS or through Adaptec utility. Make sure you chose correct source drive

- If exteral array is also SCSI, move both it to external array (if you have place), create a RAID1 volume from it and mark it as bootable. Make sure you enable SCSI boot in BIOS. This way, you have an automatic failover.

- Install R-drive image, chose disk copy on sector-by-sector basis. (I switched HDD boot drive for SSD without re-installing the OS this way four weeks ago).

Ah HA! Maybe that is the magic answer. I will download it and give R-image a try.

We really don't use that old RAID for much except to keep some not real critical old files that are handy to have. We want to keep it running as long as possible because of inertia more than anything. We have another 38 TB of RAID storage and will be buying another one soon. We just need a Petabyte RAID, well we WANT a Petabyte RAID.

Well crap. I downloaded the trial version of R-Drive image and my antivirus program scanned the download and said it was unsafe and deleted it. Back to square one.

[beepbeep]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

Ah HA! Maybe that is the magic answer. I will download it and give R-image a try.

We really don't use that old RAID for much except to keep some not real critical old files that are handy to have. We want to keep it running as long as possible because of inertia more than anything. We have another 38 TB of RAID storage and will be buying another one soon. We just need a Petabyte RAID, well we WANT a Petabyte RAID.

Well crap. I downloaded the trial version of R-Drive image and my antivirus program scanned the download and said it was unsafe and deleted it. Back to square one.

Basically any "partition copy" software will work. Some are better than others. Good ones work directly under Windows (otherwise it might be a hassle for boot CD to find correct drivers for your 15 year olds SCSI adapter). Good ones copy only used sectors and ignore empty ones.

And make sure you chose correct source drive when copying. It's worth mentioning again. Ask me how I know

I am beliver in portable NAS boxes compared to real servers for up to 10TB storage. Server will eat a lot of power when on 24/7 and all those fans (CPU, power, HD cooling) tend to clog. A simple ReadyNAS box will take 4 SATA discs, has only one fan, chews 50W when active and less than 7W when discs are asleep. Quite handy size as well (~shoebox)


P.S.
What kind of RAID for 38TB array? You probably know this, but using RAID-5 or such on more than 10TB is asking for trouble. Bit rot is guaranteed and rebuild times are looong, which might as well take one more drive down.

[MysticLlama]

If the SCSI controller blows up, even having a backup hard drive might be worthless if you can't find another that's compatible, Win2k isn't real happy to have those change without a reinstall a lot of times.

Looks like a Disk2VHD won't work directly on Win2k, but there is a workaround, though it looks like a huge hassle. That way you'd have a virtual machine that you could boot from any other hardware. Windows Server 2000 P2V with Disk2VHD | TEK R

Maybe someone else would have another idea of an easy-ish way to make a virtual hard drive out of it, that'd keep it bootable on any hardware.

[Outback Porsche]

I can vaguely remember doing this with win2k by creating a disk image using a Windows PE CD. WinPE has an inbuilt imaging utility called Ghost - burn the image to a new disk. Instant disk copy including MBR.

[GH85Carrera]

Originally Posted by beepbeep

Basically any "partition copy" software will work. Some are better than others. Good ones work directly under Windows (otherwise it might be a hassle for boot CD to find correct drivers for your 15 year olds SCSI adapter). Good ones copy only used sectors and ignore empty ones.

And make sure you chose correct source drive when copying. It's worth mentioning again. Ask me how I know

I am beliver in portable NAS boxes compared to real servers for up to 10TB storage. Server will eat a lot of power when on 24/7 and all those fans (CPU, power, HD cooling) tend to clog. A simple ReadyNAS box will take 4 SATA discs, has only one fan, chews 50W when active and less than 7W when discs are asleep. Quite handy size as well (~shoebox)


P.S.
What kind of RAID for 38TB array? You probably know this, but using RAID-5 or such on more than 10TB is asking for trouble. Bit rot is guaranteed and rebuild times are looong, which might as well take one more drive down.

The other RAID boxes are spread over 3 different NAS boxes. As you said, tons cheaper and easy to swap a drive. We don't do any mission critical stuff. We just store many TBs of aerial photos and maps.