Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

One of my clients’ Dell PowerEdge Servers is getting towards the end of its 5 year warranty and was starting to generate disk errors on Drive 0, a hot swap SCSI hard drive.

The drive was part of a Windows 2000 Server software RAID 1 (mirror) set and it needed to be replaced.

Here is the procedure I used that did not cost any downtime of the server.

1. Make sure all backups and disaster recovery plan are up to date.
2. Remove the failing hard drive (Windows Server now shows it as “missing” with failed redundancy on the remaining drive.
3. In Disk Management, right click each partition on the remaining Drive 1 of the mirror set and select “remove mirror”. A popup window asks which disk to remove from the set, I selected the “Drive 0 (missing)” option. Windows displayed the “missing” status making this easy to get correct.
4. Once all mirrors were removed (3 partitions), I was able to right click the missing disk itself and select “remove disk”.
5. Inserted new disk as Drive 0, waited a moment and refreshed the screen to show it.
6. Right clicked the new drive and selected “write signature”.
7. Right clicked the new drive and selected “upgrade to dynamic disk”. (I’m not sure if it really is an upgrade, but it’s the only way to software mirror.)
8. Right clicked each partition that I wanted to mirror on Drive 1 and selected “add mirror” and then selected (the only choice) Drive 0 as the drive to use for the mirroring operation.

After that, the drives synchronized and the mirror became functional.

Step 9: breathe….

Ever notice that it takes 4 or 5 times longer to tell someone what they don’t want to hear than to tell them what they want to hear?

I had a conversation with a cheap (not inexpensive) Dell desktop computer owner today. He bought this “good deal” 13 months ago. It came with a 1 year warranty. It came with RAID 1 (mirrored hard drives) to help protect his data.

Sidenote: RAID 1 protects you if 1 hard drive dies. Period. If the controller goes bad gradually (bad thing, rather have it die outright), or if a hard drive just starts scrambling data, you will likely end up with either 2 hard drives of either mismatched garbage or matched garbage.

For $39, Dell helped him get the RAID array re-mirrored. 24 hours later, the array is again being reported as “degraded”, i.e., both drives not matched. Windows is locking up and certain program files are being reported as corrupted or “damaged”. Want to take a guess what his data files are like?

The user tells me all of this, then carefully explains what error messages his browser reports when surfing a local news website. It takes 15 minutes to tell him to quit worrying about Windows until he has the hardware working solidly.

I tell him that after he gets the hardware repaired and squared away – I recommend he ask Dell for an extended service contract, they might do it at 13 months – he will likely have to reload Windows from the Dell Recovery CD that came with his PC. A Windows Repair install is probably not even a good idea at this point.

Oops. This was one of those “today only” super specials (that you can get every day) and, in order to offer such a good deal, Dell decided they couldn’t afford the 39 cents it would cost them to include a recovery CD.

I’ve said before, I say again, there are few reasons not to get a 3 year warranty on computer hardware:

• You pride yourself on being penny wise and pound foolish
• You are using the PC’s to run a political campaign and the election is less than 1 year from now
• Your doctor gives you less than 1 year to live and you have no heirs
• Your wealth makes Bill Gates and Warren Buffet look like middle class citizens

Think about it. The (r)e-tailer thinks so highly of the product that they are only willing to stand behind it for a year. Why should you think it will last longer than that?

If you buy right and your needs change little (my clients still use Microsoft Office 2000) that PC you buy today should cover your needs for at least 3 years. My clients typically get 5 – 8 years from PC’s.

I could fill a book with stories of computer hardware that had a 1 year warranty that died after 13 months. The name Gateway stands out in this category but Dell would find its name there too.

Don’t buy without a 3 year warranty. If you do, please don’t call me when it pukes after 13 months.