Today is the big day. The server got its new harddrives. I was able to install the original two 120GB ATA drives (old RAID 1) into the ATA66 slot and add the new 250GB drives (new RAID 1) into the ATA100 slot. I will continue to run the OS off the old RAID, figuring that anything OS and software related is easily replacable. This way I avoid having to transfer the OS and all the server settings between the two disks .The new RAID will now host our FTP files, as well as the in-office file share. Being able to run both RAIDs at the same time saved me huge headaches as I did not have to figure out how to transfer files or rebuild the server. I am sure that the original

It seems like the CD/DVD drive is shot – I initially tried to boot from DVD to be able to monkey with the startup disks – no such luck. So I will have to figure out a way to get that replaced. I also noticed that after the swap, the original RAID’s status is set to degraded. I will move the files to the new RAID first, and then attempt to rebuild the orignial RAID. I will add some comments as I go along.

3.19PM: I attempted to recover the second disk of the old RAID without success. The computer complains immediately after startup that the disk is not usable – it offers to ignore, eject, or erase the drive. I have not erased it yet. The old RAID remains at “degraded” status. The info for the missing drive is rather peculiar as well. SMART status is now set to not supported, where its former counterpart supports this fully. I wonder if the drive is shot, or if the ATA66 bus requires a different setup. I tried connecting the old RAID back to the ATA100 bus without any luck of resurrecting the seamingly broken drive. I am hesitant to format it, as I would like to add it back to the RAID, but I actually have no idea how to do this, since there doesn’t seam to be a button to recover the RAID. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Without a functional DVD/CD drive I cannot start from a different volume to see what that allows me to do in the disk utility.

4.47PM: The server is serving again, but with one missing original drive which still doesn’t want to respond. I tried to manually configure master and slave on that bus, rather than using the cable config – no success. The drive is still spinning and responds to Disk Utility. It’s showing all 120GB available – not a good sign. I guess my second slice of the original RAID has been eaten up by something. I need a new strategy for this problem. Any ideas?
I ordered a new Pioneer 110D drive to replace the expired model 104D – not having any access to install disks is just a bad idea.
After putting the server back on the network, I was immediately able to pull up the shares on my client computers, since names didn’t change – nice. I am running NUD/C off the old RAID and I am contemplating having the backups stored to the new RAID – the only problem: Now Server doesn’t want to backup the Contact Server file. It will save the Calendar file, however – any ideas on how to solve this?

4.56PM: I think I will take off soon. Gotta get some plans out the door. No more work on the server for today – but once the new disk drive comes in, I will have to look at that harddrive issue again.