Using "Restore Anyway" with RAID and new drivers on other media

[NickM61]

Hello.  We have an SBS 03 server install (has Backup Exec 7), with recovery point creation now generating I/O data errors.  We cannot create any new recovery points for this reason, though we have recent ones.

I find that this OS was installed as a RAID 0 (2 drive) array.  The server hardware is also ancient.

Therefore...  I am thinking that it might make sense to recover to updated hardware using the marvelous "recover anyway" feature.  This raises 2 questions: 

1. Is it possible to "recover anyway" this installation to a different raid array (0 or 5) that uses a different raid driver?

2. Being our Backup Exec recovery cd does not have drivers (we do not have the new hardware yet) can all of the new hardware drivers be on a different cd or drive than the recovery point?  Due to the I/O errors, I cannot create a new recovery point cd that has new hardware drivers.

Here is the error from the Backup Exec System Recovery Log:

10/21/2010 11:02:06 AM High Priority Error: Error EC8F17B7: Cannot create recovery points for job: Drive Backup of  (C:\) (3). Error E7C3000F: Device \\.\SymantecSnapshot0 cannot read 8192 sectors starting at LBA 100718192. Error EBAB03F1: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. 0xE7C3000F (Backup Exec System Recovery)

I am reluctant to try to recover bad sectors on this sort of install fearing subsequent boot failure.  Thank you for any help with this urgent situation.

[NickM61]

Ok I just found this article.  Missed it the first time  :)

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH84397&actp=search&viewlocale=en_U...

[NickM61]

Ok that was the solution.  Pretty basic

May I still ask this:

I am thinking that it might make sense to recover to updated hardware using the marvelous "recover anyway" feature.

Is it possible to "recover anyway" this installation to a different raid array (0 or 5) that uses a different raid driver?

[AndrewPBG]

Recovering to a system with a different RAID controller is one of the main features of BESR. There is a bug I've found with Server 2003 getting the Server 2008 version of the lsi_sas.sys driver for LSI MegaRAID controllers (it causes a 0x000000D1/DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL BSOD on startup), but copying in the correct version is pretty straightforward.

As far as getting the new drivers into BESR if it doesn't already have support built in, you can use a USB stick or pull from a network share. It's super easy since version 7, and as a result we don't really bother building custom SRD discs.

[NickM61]

Thanks.  Our raid controllers are built into the MB so the raid driver has to be externally loaded.  If I am changing raid controllers (MBs) does BESR prompt for a new raid driver after SBS install cds have partitioned and formatted the new array?

[AndrewPBG · Accepted solution]

There will be a "Load a Driver" button visible directly on the main screen after booting the SRD. Feed it a 32 bit Vista driver (this is the platform the SRD is built on) and you're off to the races. At the end of the recovery stage, the SRD will ask you for the driver for the target OS. Note that in both cases, you'll need to ensure that the drivers are extracted to their .inf and .sys files. If the driver comes as an install.exe, that won't work in the SRD environment, and you should extract it from a regular Windows installation first.

You might be surprised, though, how many drivers are built right into the SRD. It's quite rare that it won't already be able to work with your array immediately without loading more drivers. Of course, it doesn't hurt to be prepared. :)

[NickM61]

Thanks for helping with this.  I really appreciate it.

Does this mean that BESR formats the raid array automatically as part of the recovery process?

What sort of driver were you referring to with "32 bit vista driver"?  Is this a raid driver for temporary use?

And then "target OS" driver is the final raid driver for SBS 03?