How to boot to secondary mirror after primary failed?

Question

How to boot to secondary mirror after primary failed?

Anonymous

I started out with one hard drive running Windows XP 32-bit. I shrunk the partition to make room for a second one, then installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on the second partition. The XP partition is D: and the 7 partition is C: (even though XP's partition is first). I do not use the XP install at all, but it's stuck there. This hard drive is 400GB, with a 50GB XP partition and a 350GB partition for 7.

I have bought a larger hard drive (1TB) and want to move my installation of Windows 7 over to it. I created a mirror (RAID 1) of that partition over to the new drive, which worked just fine. I even tested booting to the secondary drive (which is now an option when booting up!) and that worked. Next, I broke the mirror, removed the first hard drive (simulating a drive failure) and tried to boot to the new drive. It did not work and just hung at boot. Next, I booted to Windows 7 setup and used the Startup Repair recovery option. It does not even recognize the Windows installation (cannot see "c:" in the command prompt, and does not show anything in the list of OS'es that are recoverable). I confirmed that the BIOS can see it.

I repeated the recovery process with just the original drive in place, and it does show that installation.

I repeated the recovery process again, but had the new drive as the first one and the original as the second one (referring to order as detected by the BIOS). In this scenario, it shows both drives, and both OSes in the list, and let's me see both in the command prompt. However, when I try to run the repair (hoping it will fix the MBR or something), it says there's nothing to repair. Just in case, I also copied all the files from the root of the D: (XP install) partition, thinking that may help make it detect the OS easier and facilitate the repair, but that didn't help.

So - what are the steps supposed to be to boot to the secondary mirror in the event of a hardware failure with the primary?

Alternatively, I'm open to another method to move this install without reinstalling. I thought about backing up using the Easy Transfer program and reinstalling, but think there should be another way since that's supposed to be the point of mirroring your boot drive!

Also, I'm an MSDN Universal subscriber, so I get 10 activations. If I do reinstall, I lose one of those, which I'd prefer not to do.

Thanks!

Jason Burroughs, Austin TX

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Answer 1

Anonymous

thanks for nothing. i decided to just reinstall.

jeez...

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Answer 2

I have bought a larger hard drive (1TB) and want to move my installation of Windows 7 over to it. I created a mirror (RAID 1) of that partition over to the new drive, which worked just fine. I even tested booting to the secondary drive (which is now an option when booting up!) and that worked. Next, I broke the mirror, removed the first hard drive (simulating a drive failure) and tried to boot to the new drive. It did not work and just hung at boot.

I know this is to late to actually help you, but since I think I know the problem because I did the same thing and had the same problem maybe we can save someone else some time and frustration.

"Next, I broke the mirror,"

If you used Disk manager to break the mirror then it somehow marks the secondary drive as unbootable (probably for security purposes).

Correct method (well, worked for me):

Setup your mirror.

Let the machine copy for hours on end.

Unplug the primary drive (in my case, the one with SMART errors)

Set the new drive as Primary either by connecting to port 1 on your motherboard or through BIOS settings (depends on the mother board).

Drive should boot with funny message. If this is the secondary drive when you made the array you would choose "Windows 7 - secondary plex (C:\Windows)" as your boot option (choosing the other one will tell you that you are missing hardware...it means drive one of the array doesn't exist

Congrats, you booted!! (I hope)

If you get sick of the annoying menu on every boot (why I came here searching):

Click Start and type MSCONFIG into the "Search programs and files" box and hit Enter

Go to the Boot tab

Set "Windows 7 - secondary plex (C:\Windows)" as the default

TEST BY REBOOTING TO BE SURE IT WORKS!!!

You can go back to MSCONFIG and lower the Timeout at this point.

Hope that helps and doesn't sour people on drive mirroring.

Answer 3

I started out with one hard drive running Windows XP 32-bit. I shrunk the partition to make room for a second one, then installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on the second partition. The XP partition is D: and the 7 partition is C: (even though XP's partition is first). I do not use the XP install at all, but it's stuck there. This hard drive is 400GB, with a 50GB XP partition and a 350GB partition for 7.

OK, I should have read closer. Your XP partition may have changed some of the directions (I didn't have a XP partition).

My mirror was a straight Win 7 partition. I'm not sure if you mirrored the partition or the entire drive...instructions probably match if you mirrored entire drive but I'm not sure.

Answer 4

The steps I took to create the mirror:

I already described most of this, but here is more detail. I had an existing 450GB hard drive with the first partition having XP, and the second partition with Windows 7 x64. Everything was working fine. This one disk was a Basic Disk.

Brand new hard drive, right out of the box, Serial ATA 1TB. I connected it and booted up, found new hardware, saw the disk as blank and uninitialized. I initialized the disk. Next, I right clicked on the existing C: drive with my Windows 7 x64 installation and chose "Add Mirror". It popped up with the list of drives to choose from. Drive 1 was the only one on the list. It said I had to have dynamic disks for this, so I converted both into dynamic disks. It continued, and slowly "resynched" the two drives.

That is how I created the mirror.

I followed your other two links, but they did not resolve my issue. I had XP installed first, so the first link was not relevant. I did read it anyway, but it did not help.

The second link, about bootrec.exe - I did try that one. When I boot up to the Windows 7 setup disk with the new disk as the only disk in the system, the screen that lists the detected operating systems does not recognize that there is a recoverable Windows 7 installation at all. however, if I have the old drive also attached, it shows both the primary and secondary mirror's Windows 7 installation. If i try the bootrec commands, it says there is no Windows installation at all, even though I can go into C: D: and E: from the command prompt.

I'm really stumped!

Answer 5

Hi Jason Burroughs,

Welcome to Microsoft Answers Forum!

· We would like to know the steps you have followed to create a mirror or the image of the partition?

All the operating system files would have been copied, and the boot files required to boot the computer would have been in your primary partition.

You may follow the steps listed in the below link:

Windows no longer starts after you install an earlier version of the Windows operating system in a dual-boot configuration: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529

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How to boot to secondary mirror after primary failed?

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