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Making other logical drive on HP 641 SMART controller bootable

Forum Systems : HP - Making other logical drive on HP 641 SMART controller bootable

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Hello all,

I have a HPML350 G4p currently with a RAID5 146GB set for both the System and Data partitions. These drives are in slots 0,1,2. The C partition was initially created at 10GB and the rest D for data. With the system partition small for Server 2003 and running out of space, I have purchased 2 additional 72GB drives and intened to put the OS on the new RAID1 set. I plugged in both new drives in slots 3 and 4 and created the RAID1 set. Now I used Acronis imaging and backed up the entire disk and made a image of just the C partition onto a external HD. Once the backup was done, I restored the imgage on the external HD to the new RAID1 set in slots 3, 4.
Now, I want to be able to boot the server now to the second logical RAID1 volume but evidently there are no options on any HP RAID controller to make any type of logical drive bootable. When powering up the server, the server still boots from the original System partition on the RAID5 set. How do I make the server boot to the RAID1 system volume. I still want to keep the system on the RAID5 set until I know it works.
Well, i called HP and got 2 different answers and left me stumped. The first rep mentioned that you cant of course change the boot order and that you will have to edit the boot ini file. He could not really explain why the RAID5 set was the bootable system and how to distinguish if it was becuase it was in slots 0,1,2 as supposed to 3 and 4. I then asked if I can simpley move the RAID 1 drives from 3,4 to 0,1 and the RAID5 set to 2,3,4 and he said that will not work because the contorller knows that 0,1,2 are a RAID5 and 3,4 are a RAID1.....but he said "you can try" but you may lose data and to make it work you would have to recreate the sets and reinstall Windows on the RAID1 set in slot 0,1 so the server will know to initially boot from the server.........well, i kind of fioured he may be clueless or not too knowledgeable so I called back another again to speak with someone else.
This time rep 2 says the same you can change the boot order, but try as well booting the RAID1 set without the RAID5 set and if it boots, try putting the RAID5 set back in and see if it boots off the RAID5. He also did say that you can easily move the drives between slots and it will remember the configuation and data because the controller is a SMART controller. Apparently tech rep 1 did not know what he was talking about, though i hope rep 2 is right. If that is the case, i want to move the RAID1 set to slots 0,1 but rep2 could not still guarantee me it will work.
Can anyone verify rep2 is correct and the right way of if there is a way to do this without backing up restoring anything else (in other words with the least amount of effort). You would think you would get the right answers from HP on their own hardfware. So my ultimate goal is to boot Server 2003 to logical volume 2 RAID1 (arrayB) on slots 3,4. Any help appreciated. Thanks!!!

Jimmy

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