Windows 2003 Crash Mirrored Array

[ebylenga]

Hi everyone,

 

Using Retrospect Multi Server on Windows 2003 R2. My boot drives are configured as a mirrored SATA RAID array.

 

My problem is my array appears as two separate drives in Retrospect. When I go to backup my server crashes taking one of the two drives with it. Now when I reboot I'm down to one active drive and only one drive appears in retrospect (the other is grayed out) and I can back up normally without a crash.

 

Frankly I'd really like to have my mirrored array back.

 

I suspect a retrospect problem with my RAID controller? (Intel ICH7R/DH)

 

Has anyone else experienced this problem using a similar controller, is there any fix available? I have no problem with a similar mirrored configuration on another IBM eServer at the office.

 

Thanks in advance...

 

Eric

[Philipp]

Eric,

 

I don't have experience with this configuration and Retrospect - but made my experience with this configuration and Windows.

 

It is important to say that ICH7R/DH is not a real RAID-Controller. It is a software RAID (or Fake-RAID, as the Linux community likes to call it). So there are two hard disks for the OS - and only the driver makes them to one. I didn't make good experiences with this configuration (crashes, rebuilds, ...) and so switched back to a non-RAID configuration. But that should not be a reason for Retrospect to crash.

 

Is the other system also a ICH7R/DH? Or might it be a hardware RAID?

 

Philipp

[ebylenga]

Thanks for you reply Philipp,

 

Hmm... If it's just the driver that makes them one device then it looks as if Retrospect isn't using the driver to access the array? I wonder what it is using then?

 

My other server is an IBM xSeries 306m from the hardware profile it looks like its using some form of Adaptec AHCI Serial ATA HostRAID controller. I can't determine much more than that. Same idea on that server two drives, mirrored, works great.

 

Eric