Comments on: Fun With Software RAID on Windows Server 2008

By: Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com

Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:11:18 +0000

Try this link from amazon $15 for 30 disks. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009QP2Q?ie=UTF8&tag=asthad-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00009QP2Q”

And ATA will get a whopping .83 on your purchase :)

By: Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com

Karl L. Gechlik | AskTheAdmin.com — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:08:18 +0000

I have tried this and could not get it to work. If anyone knows how I would love to hear about it!

By: Georges K

Georges K — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:37:46 +0000

brain: In my experience, booting from a USB key instead of floppy is flaky at best, depending on the applications. sometimes they seem to work, and sometimes they don’t.

On my server, even the PowerEdge 1900/1950 I still order them with either a built in Floppy Drive, or a USB external floppy, specifically because I know that if something happens,or i need to update some particular firmware, I have to use the floppy. Go figure. I also say WTF quite often about that one.

Funny part is, I have a harder time actually finding a floppy disk media than finding me a floppy disk drive!… and when I do find one… dope.. it’s fully of bad sectors… tsk tsk !

By: brain

brain — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 05:44:45 +0000

I wonder if you could boot off a usb stick instead of a floppy?
I had to do that on a SLES 11 server this morning, and I used that HP utility to make the stick bootable. Then maybe copy the data from your newly created floppy in 2008 to the usb drive?
I’m curious to see if it would work. I almost put 2008 on that server after the 6th SLES install :)

By: El Di Pablo

El Di Pablo — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:23:06 +0000

You know what is better than an external Floppy drive? A virtual floppy drive through iLO. The boot floppy over iLO works pretty well too.

-EDP

By: Hawk

Hawk — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:12:17 +0000

Shout out to H-town.

Haha i liked the floppy line also but forgot that both my machines have floppys.

I have a DL380 G2 (old P3). I had it running in software RAID and never had any problems with it.

I upgraded about 2.5 years ago to a ML370 G4, also has a built in floppy, but its got a RAID controller in it. I use tape to backup and by the way we are on SBS 2003

By: CoryK

CoryK — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 20:38:15 +0000

Great read.

I go a kick out of this line: If your server has a built in floppy drive, well then yours is older than mine, and your in better shape.

I think I would argue that if it’s got a built in floppy drive, they’re probably in worse shape… (The only servers I have that have built in floppy are scary old, and putting Windows Server 2008 on them is not fun (have you ever tried to install it without a DVD drive?) of course, if I’m not mistaken you can do this in Windows server 2003 too)

After reading the part about rebuilding the BCD on disk0, I’m wondering if it’s possible to do the same with disk1 (rebuild the BCD). I would guess that you *might* be able to boot the Windows 2008 DVD (or just about any install media since Vista) then pull up the recovery console, and then rebuild the BCD of disk0 from there.