Re: NT4 Recovery with ADSM on a ZIP Drive

Michael,

You wrote:

>Hi,
>I want to recover a NT 4.0 Server with ADSM and an external ZIP Drive.
>On the ZIP Drive is NT 4.0 (Stand-Alone Server with an connection to the
>ADSM Server) and an ADSM Backup Client 3.1.0.6 installed.
>Does anyone know how to bring a Compaq ProLiant 2500 to boot from this ZIP
>Drive?
>Or has anyone experience in such a recovery plan?
>Michael Heeger
>Michael.Heeger AT SerCon DOT de
>IT Consultant
>SerCon GmbH

A pre-version of the desaster recovery redbook contained a description on
booting an NT system from an arbitrary SCSI disk (provided it is big
enough). Unfortunately, they dropped it in the final version, but I kept a
printed copy of this section for my reference:

You must create a special boot diskette; it must be formatted under NT (so
it contains the correct boot record) and must contain the following four
files:
 - NTLDR (copy from Your C: partition)
 - NTDETECT.COM (copy from Your C: partition)
 - BOOT.INI (copy from Your C: partition, and modify as described below)
 - NTBOOTDD.SYS (the NT driver of Your SCSI controller)

BOOT.INI is a plain text file; it contains two sections:
 - the section headed by "[boot loader]" describes the default action
 - the section headed by "[operating systems]" describes the OS choices You
are presented when You boot using the diskette; each entry in this section
has the format:
<boot-device>\<NT-directory>="<description>"
where
<boot-device> describes the device that contains the NT operating system
(see below),
<NT-directory> is the path to the directory that contains NT, and
<description> is the text that is displayed in the boot menu.

<boot-device> may be specified in one of the following ways:
 - if You access the boot device using the ROM BIOS (usually for fixed disks):
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(<disk-no>)partition(<partition-no>)
where
<disk-no> specifies the disk (a number from 0 to 3, with 0 being the C:
disk), and
<partition-no> is the number of the partition on the disk (1 is the primary
partition)
 - if You access the boot device using the NTBOOTDD.SYS SCSI driver:
scsi(<controler>)disk(<scsi-id>)rdisk(<lun>)partition(<partition-no>)
where
<controler> is the number of the SCSI-controller (usually 0 for the first
controler),
<scsi-id> is the SCSI-Id of the device,
<lun> the LUN (usually 0); LUNs (or "Logical Unit Numbers") is a way for
addressing different (sub-) devices that are accessible via the same
SCSI-Id, and
<partition-number> is the number of the partition on the specified device.

Example:
If Your ZIP drive has SCSI Id. 5, You probably need the following line in
Your BOOT.INI file:
scsi(0)disk(5)rdisk(0)partition(1)\PATH\TO\YOUR\NT\SYSTEM="Boot system on
ZIP drive"

Warning: I did not try this, so I cannot garantee that it works!

HTH - Alfred Novacek

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dipl.-Ing. Alfred Novacek
Dipl.-Ing. Alfred Novacek
Institute for Data Processing in Business Administrations,
     Economics and Social Sciences
Johannes Kepler University Linz / Austria
E-Mail: Novacek AT idv.uni-linz.ac DOT at
        Novacek AT pop.idv.uni-linz.ac DOT at
WWW: http://www.idv.uni-linz.ac.at