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samsung21

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How do I boot off the 2nd mirrored drive on my server if i remove the first hard drive or if it fails?

I am using (3) Dell Poweredge 2650 servers with dual XEON processors and two IBM Ulrastar 76GB hard drives. The operating system is windows 2003 standard r2. Imirrored the two drives by using the computer management windows utility.

When I try to simulate a hard drive crash and attempt to boot off of the second hard drive in the server it just pauses at the bios boot screen after the SCSI bios discovers the devices available. When I stick the first drive back in or in its correct place with the second drive, it asks if i want to boot to C: or the mirror and loads windows fine. (it doesnt seem to matter what position the second mirrored drive is in.)
I changed the bios boot device order in the bios as well.

I can do this on three different Dell Poweredge 2650 servers.

The raid keys were removed before I received the machines and the mirror never has been a problem.
I would just like to be sure I am not doing this for nothing.
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athouston
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Please clarify, are you using the Windows disk manager to create the mirrors or the Dell Array manager software or the Dell RAID controller BIOS.
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samsung21

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I mirrored the two drives by using the windows 2003 computer management windows utility and then selected disk management.
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mastoo
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Thank you everyone for your input.