Drive not recognized

[Guest]

This is not a Retrospect question, specifically, but I'm hoping someone will have an answer.

 

I have a customer who has a Dell server running a single 2.4 GHz Xeon processor with four (dual mirrored) SCSI drives in a software RAID. I recently purchased the 7.5 SBS Std. upgrade (from 6.5 Server). The NOS is Win2K SP4, and is current on all updates. No Exchange or SQL Servers running. I remote in under Terminal Services. Unlike 2003 where you can come in on the console session, 2000 TS appears to have to start a new session. That creates some confusion for Retrospect. It has to shut down the other instance if I want to view it in the current session. I think that is a minor nuisance, but it might be related to the problem.

 

Initially, I had the WD2500YS (SATA Raid Edition in Cintre external cases) drives hooked to a USB1.1 port, but that didn't work at all. The backups failed within a few minutes of starting -- problems losing connection. I installed a USB2.0 card and the backups now run to completion with only obvious errors like system data files changing before verification. I can't remember the brand of the USB2.0 card but it shows up in Device Manager as a "Standard OpenHCD PCI to USB Host Controller."

 

The problem is that when my customer swaps drives, I have to reboot the PC to get the drive to be recognized. When I remember to do that (remotely) the scripts run fine. Until I reboot the server, the replacement drive shows up only as "Local Disk" with no size, and when I try to access it through explorer, I'm told it's not available. I've tried a few things to keep from having to reboot, like uninstalling and refinding the hard drive, uninstalling and refinding the USB card, and restarting any services I can think of that would reset the card or drive. No luck.

 

Now one thing that may tie all these things together is that when I was there last, I swapped drives without a problem. I could see the new drive with the correct label and I swapped back and forth a few times. Could it be that the drive swap is only causing a problem in TS, and that when I remotely check on Retrospect and start it in a TS session other than the console, that's making the drive semi-invisible?

 

Anyone have any other ideas about what might be causing the problem?

 

If I could just find a service that I could restart that would make the drive be recognized, I'd be happy.

 

Thanks for your time,

 

Mark