Trying to replace a dynamic disk

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Philip Herlihy

I've been asked to look at an elderly Win2K server which produced an error
on boot saying there were SMART errors and the disk should be replaced.

I've been trying to clone the disk to a new one using Acronis True Image but
the edition I have doesn't support Dynamic disks (so won't let me select
it - read the manual eventually!). I'm in the process of creating a disk
image which I hope to apply to the new disk (two stage cloning instead of
one). I've just seen an error saying that there are problems reading some
blocks, so the image won't be complete.

Is it worth trying a chkdsk on the dodgy disk and trying the image again?
Is this even possible with a dynamic disk?

Any advice will be greatly valued.

Phil, London
 
Philip Herlihy said:
I've been asked to look at an elderly Win2K server which produced an error
on boot saying there were SMART errors and the disk should be replaced.

I've been trying to clone the disk to a new one using Acronis True Image
but the edition I have doesn't support Dynamic disks (so won't let me
select it - read the manual eventually!). I'm in the process of creating
a disk image which I hope to apply to the new disk (two stage cloning
instead of one). I've just seen an error saying that there are problems
reading some blocks, so the image won't be complete.

Is it worth trying a chkdsk on the dodgy disk and trying the image again?
Is this even possible with a dynamic disk?

Any advice will be greatly valued.

Phil, London
Click to expand...

It's worth adding that we're most keen to rescue an expensive database
application which will be very expensive to reinstall. I have a Win2K
server installation CD, and a valid license key, but it's the original
without any service packs.

Phil
 
Philip Herlihy said:
I've been asked to look at an elderly Win2K server which produced an error
on boot saying there were SMART errors and the disk should be replaced.

I've been trying to clone the disk to a new one using Acronis True Image
but the edition I have doesn't support Dynamic disks (so won't let me
select it - read the manual eventually!). I'm in the process of creating
a disk image which I hope to apply to the new disk (two stage cloning
instead of one). I've just seen an error saying that there are problems
reading some blocks, so the image won't be complete.

Is it worth trying a chkdsk on the dodgy disk and trying the image again?
Is this even possible with a dynamic disk?

Any advice will be greatly valued.

Phil, London
Click to expand...

Running chkdsk on a flawed disk is likeley to make matters worse if there
are file system errors. I would do this instead:
1. Partition and format the new disk on some other machine. Do not create
dynamic partitions.
2. Mark the system partition as Active.
3. Connect both the old and the new disks to that other Win2000/XP PC.
4. Run this command from a Command Prompt:
robocopy O:\ N:\ /s /R:1 /W:1 /np /Copy:DATSO /log:c:\Robocopy.log
where O: represents the drive letter of the old disk, N: of the new disk.
5. Examine c:\Robocopy.log for error messages.

You can get robocopy from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...69-57FF-4AE7-96EE-B18C4790CFFD&displaylang=en

This process will be much slower than the Acronis imaging process. However,
it will skip over unreadable clusters and it will deal with dynamic disks,
except that it will ignore any of the dynamic disk-specific functions if you
used them. The new disk will be bootable if you take Steps 1 and 2 above.
 
Pegasus said:
Running chkdsk on a flawed disk is likeley to make matters worse if there
are file system errors. I would do this instead:
1. Partition and format the new disk on some other machine. Do not create
dynamic partitions.
2. Mark the system partition as Active.
3. Connect both the old and the new disks to that other Win2000/XP PC.
4. Run this command from a Command Prompt:
robocopy O:\ N:\ /s /R:1 /W:1 /np /Copy:DATSO /log:c:\Robocopy.log
where O: represents the drive letter of the old disk, N: of the new
disk.
5. Examine c:\Robocopy.log for error messages.

You can get robocopy from
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...69-57FF-4AE7-96EE-B18C4790CFFD&displaylang=en

This process will be much slower than the Acronis imaging process.
However, it will skip over unreadable clusters and it will deal with
dynamic disks, except that it will ignore any of the dynamic disk-specific
functions if you used them. The new disk will be bootable if you take
Steps 1 and 2 above.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll certainly try this. I've used Robocopy extensively in the
past but never in this context. I'll let you know how I get on. Much
appreciated.

Phil
 
Philip Herlihy said:
Thanks! I'll certainly try this. I've used Robocopy extensively in the
past but never in this context. I'll let you know how I get on. Much
appreciated.

Phil
Click to expand...

I've taken my time over this! After a lot of reading, I processed the disk
for 24 hours with Spinrite, after which I did manage to get a disk image to
work. However, I took your advice and used Robocopy to copy everything to a
new disk, which I marked as Active. Today I finally got to try the disks
(the original and the cloned one) in the chassis. Both have booted
perfectly. So, it looks like Spinrite did manage to reconstruct the data on
the original disk (which has since passed the manufacturer's diagnostic
tests). However, I've left the cloned disk in the machine, as it's a brand
new disk which is obviously a better bet. The sql-server-based application,
which it was particularly hoped to preserve, appears to be working well.

I'll need to read up more on Dynamic Disks. Disk management reports that a
dynamic disk (shown as a separate physical disk) is "missing". The Data
disk (also processed with Spinrite) is still shown as a Dynamic disk, but
the replacement system disk is a "Basic" disk. Since everything is working,
I'm not that alarmed, but I'll need to figure out what all this means!

Thanks, Pegasus, for your help in this.

Phil.
 
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