[guest]

Ok im posting this for you mac guys to enjoy...
we have a server at work on Windows server 2K. Raid 5 scsi hot swappable drives... very slick

Well 3 weeks ago one of the drives crashed... we put a replacement drive in and it rebuilt the stripes or whatever the raid 5 does..

from my limited understanding.. raid 5 over 3 drives puts a little info on all 3 drives... so if 1 of the 3 drives dies.. you do not notice anything - the system stays up.. and when you replace the drive (while still powered up), it rebuilds the new drive with the old info and its a seamless drive change..

well sort of..

After i replaced the drive .. the windows 2K rebuilt the drive but now when you log onto it.. you get no desktop...

This server houses a bunch of applications and has shared folders and drives.. all of which is working fine but after logon the only thing on the screen is the mouse pointer..

Now i am mostly concerned about it backing up.. and with CTL/ALT/DEL the task manager comes up.. i can select run task and open up backup exec.. it also runs fine.. so for now.. i am happy its up and running.. but not thrilled that i can not do anything with it...

It being a standalone server.. no problems..

But any of you pc weenies have any ideas?

I did not know if there is actually a command i can run that says 'show desktop'??

 

[MowHoward2210]

s_j,

I know a couple of good IT people at work, but I am off work today. :blacksuit I will ask around Monday to see if anyone has any solutions. Weird stuff can happen on any platform. I don't know enough about either to get into the really technical stuff, but I'm learning.

 

[tisenberg]

Launch taskmgr and instead of backupexec, type in.... explorer. That should launch the desktop.

As for RAID, if you are interested, RAID has several levels (numbers). RAID 5 is one of the popular ones for fault tolerance, there are higher levels and lower levels.

Basically what happens is, if you have a file that you save and the file has the word "THE" in it, the "T" gets written to the first disk the "H" gets written to the second disk and the "E" gets written to the third disk all at the same time. Also, when it is writing to a disk, it writes parity information to the other disks to represent what it wrote. The rule of thumb for disk space is, if you have 3 disks, you can minus out in your mind that you have three, you really only have 2 for storage due to the parity that is written.

Now, upon a failure of a drive.. say drive 1. When you go to read the file, since it can't get to drive 1, it reads the parity information from the other drives to reconstruct the "T", it then reads the "H" and "E" from the other drives. When the system is operating normally, the reads and writes are extremely fast. When running off of parity, it slows down because more work is required.

Also, you can only loose ONE drive and stay operational, once you loose a second, you are doing a restore from tape. Higher levels of RAID will allow you to run with more than one failure.

Other levels of RAID are
extending one partition onto another drive
running a mirror of disks
stripping without parity
stripping with parity
stripping with alot more parity
etc,
etc,
etc.

I seem to remember that RAID goes up to 9.

Performance, if you have a database that pounds a single disk and basically the drive light just stays on, by making that a RAID 5 (by adding disks), the drive lights will go back to blinking off and on. What that means is, that your database is no longer waiting for the drive to read and write data as much as it was before. When a customer complains about performance, one of the first things I do is look at the drive lights. If the drive lights up and doesn't go off, I tell them to do RAID, it is a tell-tale-sign of being disk bound.

 

[guest]

tis wont typing in explorer only open up windows explorer?
(thats what it does on my XP PC) ill try it tonight..
thanks


and mowhoward.. thanks for non razzing.. You know id be busting your chops if it had happended to your sour apple.. :furious: :furious:

 

[tisenberg]

If no explorer is in the task list of running Processes, the first one that starts becomes the desktop. If you run a second, third, etc, they become the standard everyday windows explorer windows.

 

[MowHoward2210]

Originally posted by simple_john


.......and mowhoward.. thanks for non razzing.. You know id be busting your chops if it had happended to your sour apple.. :furious: :furious:

s_j,

You've forced me to change my signature. Is that better? NANA

 

[guest]

much etter mowhoward:furious: :lmao:



ty\is i tried the explorer.. nothing... and i was in the task manager, i did not ewven see it comer up as a task.. im wondering if its a corrupt file...

 

[tisenberg]

sounds like explorer.exe is wack'ed. Restore it from backupexec and see what that does for you. The other issue could be one of the DLL's that explorer uses. Try and "Run" eventvwr.exe from taskmgr and see what is in the event logs.

 

[guest]

thanks ill see if i have an old tape of explorer... FYI event viewer does work i see no obvious messages about explorer being corrupted...

 

[Greg]

SJ,

Uncle Bill's garanteeed fix for your prob.

1. Turn computer OFF.
2. Turn computer ON.
3. Following message will appear.
4. Follow instructions.

<img src=http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v165/kgregc/winkeyboard.jpg>

NANA NANA NANA NANA NANA

:furious: :furious: :furious: :furious: :furious:

Greg

 

[MowHoward2210]

s_j,

Did you figure out your desktop, or lack thereof?
I was not able to inquire about your problem until today.

Here are two things I gathered from someone smarter than me:

Three drives in a Raid 5 is not ideal. You should have at least 4, or you will eat up your HD space real quick and be susceptible to problems.

It is possible the desktop was on its own partition and was not part of the striping.

Hope all is well, or at least this gives you some help.

 

[guest]

still no desktop.. im able to do what i need with the server for now.. FYI The desktop would not be on another partition
we have replaced a drive before and not had any problems...
not sure whats going on..