Cannot Boot to Duplexed Drive Using Compaq Fast Wide SCSI-2 (154065)

SYMPTOMS

If you use Windows NT Server 4.0 with a duplexed mirror set (using two controllers with the primary drive on one and the shadow drive on the other controller), you will not be able to boot to the shadow drive if the primary fails, when the shadow drive is on the CPQFWS2e controller. This applies to starting either from the hard drive or a NT boot floppy disk.

CAUSE

Even though Disk Administrator displays two drives and will allow the mirror set to be created, there is no way to boot to the shadow drive. Even with the correct Ntbootdd.sys file and correct arc path, boot fails to find the second drive. Turning off the BIOS, setting both drives to use 64-head 32-sector translation, and insuring the partition table and BIOS PARAMETER block in the boot sector are identical does not help.

RESOLUTION

In may be necessary to use a non-standard arc path in the Boot.ini file with this driver. The standard arc path would be:

   scsi(1)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server 4.0"

The arc path above would work for starting from the 2nd SCSI controller, with the shadow drive on SCSI ID 0, and assuming an EISA partition on both drives.

If this does not work, substitute SCSI(0) in the arc path. Otherwise, the normal procedure for starting from a floppy disk applies: the disk must have been formatted under Windows NT. The NTLDR, Boot.ini, and Ntdetect.com files must be on the floppy disk. Ntbootdd.sys, the hotfixed version of Cpq32fs2.sys renamed, must also be on the floppy disk.

Under Windows NT Server 3.51 you will have to move the shadow drive to the first controller and setting the system partition active will allow the computer to start normally, either from the hard disk drive directly or from the boot floppy disk. An arc path using the multi(0) syntax is required in this case.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT version 4.00. This problem was corrected in the latest Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 U.S. Service Pack. For information on obtaining the service pack, query on the following word in the Microsoft Knowledge Base (without the spaces):

S E R V P A C K