D
Dave
I have HP Proliant ML150 server, Windows Server 2003, P4 3.0GHz uniprocessor
server with a SCSI RAID-5 array.
I have several shared folders on the C drive. The disk array is 135GB, with
80GB free and about 50GB used by shared folders on the C drive.
Day 1 - I enabled shadow copies from the C drive properties, and set the max
size to 50 GB. I also clicked the button to create shadow copies now, and it
did it in a few seconds. The size it created was some small amount, like
150KB or maybe 150MB. I'd do it again to test, but I don't want to go
through that again (see below).
I restarted the server, and it got stuck at the Windows startup logo screen
with the blue bar going across continually. An hour went by, nothing. Safe
mode produced a similar result, halting after acpitabl.dat. In the recovery
console I tried chkdsk /r and got the result "The volume appears to contain
one or more unrecoverable problems." It didn't help the startup. I upgraded
the mb BIOS, still nothing. I ran the HP diagnostics
A repair of the installation from the CD just gave me a BSOD on startup. So
I reinstalled Windows to replace the old installation. I also re-enabled
shadow copies for the drive.
Day 2 - As I came in I found the server stuck on the startup screen again. I
may have rebooted that evening myself before I left - I wish I could say for
sure, but it was last week and I don't have the event logs anymore to check.
But at that point I made the correlation between enabling shadow copies and
the startup problem. So in recovery console I disabled the shadow copies
service. Restarted system, stuck again. Restarted in safe mode, success.
Restarted in normal mode, success. Disabled the shadow copies in the C drive
properties, re-enabled it with a 5GB limit instead of 50GB.
Day 3 - As I came in I found it frozen again. I don't remember if it was
stuck on startup or what, but I do remember users couldn't access any shared
folders and the other server was not able to communicate with it. At any
rate, it didn't start up, so I diabled the shadow copy service and restarted
without success. I tried also at the same time disabling the ACPI service
(as per the acpitabl.dat that safe mode was halting on), without success. So
I re-enable the ACPI service, try starting up again, and success. Basically
it was just Day 2's procedure of disabling shadow copies and attempting
restarting twice.
So it's working again for a week now, but now what? I want to enable shadow
copies on the C drive so that ntbackup can back up open files, which is
important for doing a snapshot style backup of a database we have, of which
users often leave with several files open. If I understand correctly,
enabling shadow copies and having the proper switch in ntbackup will do a
"snapshot" of all the database files' contents at a single point in time (to
avoid inconsistent records as people are modifying them), and while the
files are still open. Is this correct?
I appreciate any responses, but I know someone will completely miss the
point and recommend using a third-party backup solution instead of ntbackup,
so I'd like to point out now that that doesn't address the issue unless I'm
completely off-base about shadow copies being necessary. The backup of open
files did not succeed without shadow copies enabled, even if I used the
switch on ntbackup, so I assume any third-party software would require
shadow copies enabled for the drive as well.
How do you recommend I proceed?
Thanks,
Dave
server with a SCSI RAID-5 array.
I have several shared folders on the C drive. The disk array is 135GB, with
80GB free and about 50GB used by shared folders on the C drive.
Day 1 - I enabled shadow copies from the C drive properties, and set the max
size to 50 GB. I also clicked the button to create shadow copies now, and it
did it in a few seconds. The size it created was some small amount, like
150KB or maybe 150MB. I'd do it again to test, but I don't want to go
through that again (see below).
I restarted the server, and it got stuck at the Windows startup logo screen
with the blue bar going across continually. An hour went by, nothing. Safe
mode produced a similar result, halting after acpitabl.dat. In the recovery
console I tried chkdsk /r and got the result "The volume appears to contain
one or more unrecoverable problems." It didn't help the startup. I upgraded
the mb BIOS, still nothing. I ran the HP diagnostics
A repair of the installation from the CD just gave me a BSOD on startup. So
I reinstalled Windows to replace the old installation. I also re-enabled
shadow copies for the drive.
Day 2 - As I came in I found the server stuck on the startup screen again. I
may have rebooted that evening myself before I left - I wish I could say for
sure, but it was last week and I don't have the event logs anymore to check.
But at that point I made the correlation between enabling shadow copies and
the startup problem. So in recovery console I disabled the shadow copies
service. Restarted system, stuck again. Restarted in safe mode, success.
Restarted in normal mode, success. Disabled the shadow copies in the C drive
properties, re-enabled it with a 5GB limit instead of 50GB.
Day 3 - As I came in I found it frozen again. I don't remember if it was
stuck on startup or what, but I do remember users couldn't access any shared
folders and the other server was not able to communicate with it. At any
rate, it didn't start up, so I diabled the shadow copy service and restarted
without success. I tried also at the same time disabling the ACPI service
(as per the acpitabl.dat that safe mode was halting on), without success. So
I re-enable the ACPI service, try starting up again, and success. Basically
it was just Day 2's procedure of disabling shadow copies and attempting
restarting twice.
So it's working again for a week now, but now what? I want to enable shadow
copies on the C drive so that ntbackup can back up open files, which is
important for doing a snapshot style backup of a database we have, of which
users often leave with several files open. If I understand correctly,
enabling shadow copies and having the proper switch in ntbackup will do a
"snapshot" of all the database files' contents at a single point in time (to
avoid inconsistent records as people are modifying them), and while the
files are still open. Is this correct?
I appreciate any responses, but I know someone will completely miss the
point and recommend using a third-party backup solution instead of ntbackup,
so I'd like to point out now that that doesn't address the issue unless I'm
completely off-base about shadow copies being necessary. The backup of open
files did not succeed without shadow copies enabled, even if I used the
switch on ntbackup, so I assume any third-party software would require
shadow copies enabled for the drive as well.
How do you recommend I proceed?
Thanks,
Dave