Recovering from a master console disk failure

This topic describes how to recover from a master console disk failure.

The hard disk drive in the master console is a mirrored pair to protect against loss of the master console due to a disk failure. If one of these mirrored pair of disk drives fails and needs to be replaced, perform the following steps:

  1. Right-click the My Computer icon on your desktop and select Manage.
  2. Select Disk Management. The hard drives display in the right panel.
  3. If the failing disk drive displays, right-click the main volume of the drive and select Break Mirror.
  4. Shut down the master console and replace the failing disk drive using the procedures detailed in the documentation for your master console. Ensure that the new drive has its jumpers set the same as the drive that is being replaced. The new drive must be the same capacity or larger than the drive being replaced.
    Note:
    • It might not be obvious which of the two drives has failed. In this case, reboot with each drive connected in turn to isolate the failed drive.
    • If the replacement drive has a boot record present, erase it prior to use.
    • If the master console fails to boot, due to not being able to find the Boot Record, change the boot sequence in the BIOS to the other hard drive.
  5. Restart the master console.
  6. Right-click the My Computer icon on your desktop and select Manage.
  7. Select Disk Management. The hard drives display in the right panel.
  8. If a disk drive displays in the list marked "Missing", remove it by right-clicking the drive and selecting Remove Disk.
  9. If the new disk drive has a "no entry sign" displayed on it, right-click it and select Write Signature. This removes the "no entry sign."
  10. Right-click the new disk drive and select Upgrade to Dynamic Disk.
  11. Right-click the volume that you want to mirror and select Add Mirror. This step starts the Add Mirror Wizard
  12. Use the dialogue boxes that display to configure the second volume.
  13. A dialogue box with reference to making changes to the boot.ini file displays. You can safely ignore this.
  14. The status of both volumes, the existing drive and the new drive, will change to "Regenerating" and will, after a short period of time, start to show the percentage of regeneration completed. When the regeneration completes, the status should show as "Healthy."

Parent topic: Troubleshooting the master console

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