Raid 1 Question

[NewBoy]

Just a quick one please folks,

 

I am wiping a server at easter as the system partition is bodged up to buggery, the data drives are mirrored via a hardware controller and will not be touched. To make sure that the drives are not affected I was going to disconnect them whilst wiping the C-Drive then re-connect them afterwards and obviously have to re-apply any shares etc.

 

The question is will it be ok doing this or will it cause me any problems when re-connected and of course I will back the data up on an external drive anyway for my own piece of mind :-)

[Roberto]

Should be absolutely fine. Should also be fine to leave them connected and just choose which disk you're wiping carefully too, but there's no such thing as "too careful" for things like this, is there?

[NewBoy]

Cheers Roberto I did think so just wanted to double check.

[3s-gtech]

May be worth doing a full backup of the data drives beforehand if you have the storage. USB may be best. Can't go far wrong then.

[dhicks]

the data drives are mirrored via a hardware controller and will not be touched. To make sure that the drives are not affected I was going to disconnect them whilst wiping the C-Drive then re-connect them afterwards

 

My guess is that this is likely to cause more issues than simply leaving the drives in place while you re-format the boot drive. If you remove both drives and reboot the machine the RAID controller might decide the array has disapeared and do away with any settings. I've never had a problem re-installing an OS on a boot drive while leaving a data drive intact, although obviously make sure you double / triple check which drive you are reformatting before you actually hit "go"...

[powdarrmonkey]

If you remove both drives and reboot the machine the RAID controller might decide the array has disapeared and do away with any settings.

 

Any decent controller will import the settings back off the disks again when they are reconnected. If it didn't, you wouldn't be able to replace the controller in case of hardware failure.

[PotNoodleTech]

Be careful with that if the array see's both drives missing it may end up thinking that the array is shot and causing problems. It's an unnecessary risk to take IMHO.

 

If I were doing this, I would 100% leave the drives plugged in, when you're reinstalling the O/S just take extra care what drive you are installing it on, it should be easy to work out because the disk size of you're C: will likely be different to the disk size on you're D.

[Jawloms]

If you're that worried, is it worth taking the disk you want to wipe out, wiping it in a different PC and then putting it back? Then when you install the OS, it will go on the one with all the free space.

[ITGURU]

Whenever I do server OS upgrades, I ALWAYS do a clean install, no upgrades.

I just boot from the install media, delete the C: drive partition and boot partition, install the new OS, and once up and into windows, the data drives are still there with all folder permissions (once re-joined to the domain).

[Davit2005]

+1 for backup the data.

[ChrisMiles]

If you really want to remove the disks, remove the controller card too if you can, that should avoid any issues with configs. Then just put it back in after Windows is reinstalled and working.

 

Although I agree with making a backup, you should have backups anyway!