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Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror (Read 9849 times)
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Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Mar 20th, 2007 at 6:04pm
 
The boot into XP goes to the "ctrl-alt-del" query. After responding, I get another little window that says "logging off" at which point the system freezes, and I have to shut down with the power button.

Now the background and sys description/details:

I have a dual boot system with Win2K installed on the standard drive cable, and XP installed on a RAID mirror on the RAID cable. The boot.ini is on the RAID. I get the boot.ini screen and it works to boot to the win2k or try to boot to XP. The win2k system is on an 80GB drive, the XP is on a 100GB RAID mirror of different size drives.  The images are stored on a USB drive (v2.0). The image to be restored is the image of the RAID drive with XP and is the active/primary drive. Images were made from the XP drive of the XP  boot partition with ghost 9.0. I am trying to restore using ghost installed on the win2k drive. The image tests good in ghost and the restore goes OK. Just won't boot to the restored image afterwards.

I have tried to boot from the ghost 9.0 CD unsuccessfully even though the BIOS is set to boot first from the CD drive(s).

I have booted from and restored from the CD in the past with a totally dead target drive, but the drive restored then was installed on the standard cable. I then used the RAID BIOS to copy the restored drive to it's mirror. Haven't tried this yet; may have to. I have never tried to restore directly to the RAID before.

Thanks for any advise,

Dave

 
 
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John.
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #1 - Mar 20th, 2007 at 8:25pm
 
Are you trying to restore to a brand new blank never used disk drive?  Or to one that had been used and assigned a drive letter by the XP system in the past?

There are problems with the registry DiskID field if previously assigned drive leters are attempted to be re-used as c: drive.  This may not apply to you.

There are very few RAID questions on this board, but maybe this will help get started.

Try method #3 if this applies to you.
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #2 - Mar 20th, 2007 at 9:40pm
 
Thanks for the reply.

I don't think this applies. The image being restored has all it's registry references as c: applying to the restored image when it tries to reboot to that drive as c: anyway. I'm not cloning one partition onto another one. I'm just restoring an image of itself back to itself from an "external" op system. Seems like it should work just the same as if the restoring op-sys was from the CD drive from the ghost 9.0 disk.

Thanks,

Dave
 
 
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #3 - Mar 20th, 2007 at 9:48pm
 
You're right.  I wasn't sure if you were restoring onto a new drive, or just restoring an backup version to the current drive.

Quote:
I have tried to boot from the ghost 9.0 CD unsuccessfully even though the BIOS is set to boot first from the CD drive(s). 

This bothers me.  Not sure why.  If you put an XP CD in the cd-drive and set to boot from cd, does it recognize and boot that one?

Is there some bios setting that disables the RAID so you can restore or do other offline functions?  I assume you would have to rebuild the RAID after any Ghost 10 restore anyway.

Just tossing out ideas.
 

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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #4 - Mar 20th, 2007 at 10:11pm
 
>This bothers me.  Not sure why.  If you put an XP CD in the cd-drive and set to boot from cd, does it recognize and boot that one?

Haven't tried that one yet. I'll try it out after awhile maybe if no one has any better ideas.

>Is there some bios setting that disables the RAID so you can restore or do other offline functions?  I assume you would have to rebuild the RAID after any Ghost 10 restore anyway.

That's why I have the dual boot setup. The boot.ini on the XP drive is always readable (even thought it's not bootable) so I can still get to my alternate OS (win2k). ISTM that's odd too. Undecided

But, to answer your question, there is no bios setting that disables the RAID. There is bios setting that says don't boot to raid. When the raid is broke, the bios boots automatically to the win2k by default. Then when I fix the raid, I have to reset the bios so the raid will be the first HD to boot.

I can disconnect one of the raid drives from the array and mount it on the same bus as the win2k drive, and do the restore from there, then check the bootablility by reversing the master/slave configuration on the bus. Then, if successful, remount the good drive in the array, mirror it and all would be well. But, that's only if it all works. Not a sure bet in my mind at this point.

Thanks,

Dave
 
 
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #5 - Mar 21st, 2007 at 1:36pm
 
Got the system to boot to the Ghost CD  Smiley It seems to prefer one of the drives over the other.

But, Ghost does not see the RAID array. Sad So, I can't restore from the CD directly to the RAID.

I seem to remember somewhere a procedure to make a Ghost CD that includes other drivers. Where would this be?

Thanks,

Dave
 
 
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #6 - Mar 21st, 2007 at 1:47pm
 
Look in the FAQ section.  I think the one you want is called "How to add drivers to the Recovery CD" under Ghost 9/10.
 

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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #7 - Mar 22nd, 2007 at 10:05pm
 
Well, I tried the pebuilder procedure. It produced 98 error 5's. I will pursue fixing those on the CDForum (referenced there for help) when my registration clears.

So, I poked around and found out about the F6 interrupt during the boot from ghost CD and did that to load the RAID driver. I had never seen it before; it goes by too quick. That worked and I restored the drive successfully. So, my problem is solved.  Smiley

But, I noticed one significant difference between the restore from the Ghost CD and the restore from my win2k alternate boot OS. The ghost CD allows me to choose to restore the original disk signature, and to restore the MBR. Those choices were greyed out when I ran ghost from my alternate boot OS. Any idea why?

Thanks loads for the guidance. I really appreciate it.

Dave
 
 
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #8 - Mar 22nd, 2007 at 10:21pm
 
Sorry I didn't mention the F6 during boot.  I incorrectly assumed you had seen that.

My guess about the signature and MBR option when booting from the CD is that the theory of having to use the boot Recovery CD is that you could be restoring onto a blank unused unformatted brand new hard drive.  In that case you would want both settings.

When restoring a partition using the Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP Ghost 9/10, it must be related to the fact that the drive is mounted (my guess).  If needed you could have forced a rewrite of the MBR using the Windows 2000 startup CD with fixmbr etc commands.

Glad it's working!  Yea!   Smiley

Maybe someone else can explain the signature and MBR.

Don't be a stranger here.  You're an expert now.  We all need help and new opinions.
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #9 - Mar 23rd, 2007 at 10:59am
 
Quote:
My guess about the signature and MBR option when booting from the CD is that the theory of having to use the boot Recovery CD is that you could be restoring onto a blank unused unformatted brand new hard drive.  In that case you would want both settings.


Maybe a license issue? On my system, I can use only one at a time. But, what's to permit one to run two copies under an OS manager of some sort? The s/w couldn't tell probably, at least not without a lot of extra and extra-complicated code.

Quote:
When restoring a partition using the Windows 2000 Pro or Windows XP Ghost 9/10, it must be related to the fact that the drive is mounted (my guess).  If needed you could have forced a rewrite of the MBR using the Windows 2000 startup CD with fixmbr etc commands.


I thought of using a win98 boot floppy and doing fdisk /mbr, but though better of it so didn't. Is the win2k startup CD the same as the win2k install CD? Can you do that with the XP install CD too?

Quote:
Don't be a stranger here.  You're an expert now.  We all need help and new opinions.


You are too kind. But, I will jump in if I think I can help w/o doing damage. When (if) I get the prebuilder issue solved, I'll definitely put up the solution/whatever.

Thanks again,

Dave
 
 
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #10 - Mar 23rd, 2007 at 11:51am
 
Quote:
Maybe a license issue? On my system, I can use only one at a time.

Ghost 9 does not require "activation", but Ghost 10 and Ghost Save & Restore do.  So I would say it is not a license issue.  Ghost 9 probably "locks" the drive with some file preventing more than one instance running (just my guess).

Quote:
I thought of using a win98 boot floppy and doing fdisk /mbr, but though better of it so didn't. Is the win2k startup CD the same as the win2k install CD? Can you do that with the XP install CD too?

Yes, startup CD and install CD are the same.  Even the Windows 2000/XP Recovery console can be used (fixmbr plus lots of other recovery commands) to fix a mbr.  Note both of those are an "offline" method

I wouldn't use a Windows 98 mbr though.  I'm pretty sure the mbr code is different.

Brian and some others are the experts on modifying and adding to the WinPE and Ghost Recovery CD's.  I think it has been covered here, so search some more.  I haven't had to resort to that myself.  (I do have a PCI card for SATA support so I have a diskette and use F6 whenever I boot from my XP startup (install) CD or boot from my Ghost 10 CD, so that it recognizes my SATA drive.)

Why don't you start a new topic thread with your WinPE question?  That might attract more attention.
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #11 - Mar 23rd, 2007 at 11:42pm
 
Tried to post a new topic from home, and I always get an error.

As soon as I preview or post, I get an error response that says I need to login or register. Even after I am already logged in.

Any idea what's going on?

I logged in to my work cp from home to post this.

Thanks,

Dave
 
 
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Re: Boot Fails after Restore to RAID Mirror
Reply #12 - Mar 24th, 2007 at 8:14am
 
I had a problem like that with the Rad forum quite some time ago and it was related to my ip address changing or reconnecting.  I was connecting to the Internet using a wireless connection to a wireless router.  I think the signal level wasn't too great (or maybe interference), but I would see the system tray message "reconnected..." etc when it would re-establish my ip address after dropping.  

Every time that happened, I had to relogon to this forum.  Not sure if something similar applies to you or not, but that's the closest explanation I can come up with.
 

Ghost4me  Ghost 9, 10, 12, 14, 15.  Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7
 
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