What I have done probably six times in a production environment to recover
in the software RAID scenario (using RAID 1) is the procedure I already
spelled out below.

I remove the dead drive, swap in the mirror as its replacement, and reboot
and then rebuild a new mirror.

--
Will

"NuTCrAcKeR" wrote in message
...
what i mean is this: with software raid, you basically have 1 boot drive.
The big hint I am going to give you here is this: ARC Path. If the "boot"
drive in a software mirror goes bad ... what are you going to do to boot
your system using the other disk (the partner in the mirror)?

The following constraints apply:

no re-install media
only 1 computer at hand (the one with the failed disk)


- LC

"Will" wrote in message
...
I guess I don't understand your question. What do you mean by *primary*
here?

When I configure a boot volume as RAID 1 using Windows software RAID,
either
of those two volumes is bootable. When I lose the primary in SCSI
ID=0,
I
simply place the drive that was in SCSI ID=1 into the ID=0 slot and
reboot
the system. Windows announces that it sees new devices (actually it
just
sees movement in position of a device), and it asks to reboot. After
rebooting, the mirrored drive is now your boot device.

To fully recover, you get into Device Manager in Windows, and remove the
mirror on the now-missing defective drive. You then insert a new
device,
rescan to acquire it, mark it as dynamic, and then mirror to it.

I've done the above sequence many, many times, and it is infinitely
easier
than any hardware RAID I have used (and allows for more powerful modes
of
recovery because you can work on a device from a different computer
before
reinserting it to reboot from it).

--
Will