Server 2003 and SATA external HDD issue

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Hey all,

Quick question. It probably has a very easy resolve and I overlooked something but here goes...

I have a Vantec Nexstar 3 external 2.5" SATA HDD enclosure. It's connected to my Server 2003 box via USB (the only lead I have for it, I don't have the eSATA stuff for it).

Now when I connect it to my laptop running XP Pro, via USB, it detects it and I can explore the HDD.

In Server 2003, it detects it in the safely remove hardware bubble but is not present when I open up 'My Computer'.

The drive however is detected in the Disk Management tool but as a Basic disk with no labels or anything, just says healthy. I cannot do anything with said disk under this tool though, it just shows it's there.

Any ideas how I can get it to work? I need to image this drive on the Server 2003 box using Acronis or a similar tool (recommendations?). One point to note as additional info, when I used Acronis previously to image it to another box (which I can't use now) it failed to image the drive. Ghost also failed.

I used OnTrack to detect any errors of which it found none.

Any ideas all? Am banging my head against a brick wall with this one! Thanks.

 

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is it in the bios?

you may have to give it a drive letter for it show up in my computer, go into to device manager do it there if I remember correctly.

 

No can do on that one mate. It won't allow me to assign a drive letter. I should have added that the drive I'm trying to clone belongs to a Toshiba Laptop that has Vista on it. I need to image the clients HDD to keep as backup as I am formatting it and putting XP Pro on it for the client.

It should work fine, I have a 2.5" IDE drive using the same enclosure (only IDE of course) and Server 2003 reads it with no problems.

The Server 2003 box also has no probs with USB flash drives etc. It just appears to be this external SATA causing problems.

 

I added a bit a bout giving it a letter above I actually had to do that a couple of weeks ago with a flash drive, are the drives set to master n slave etc.

 

No need for M/S as they are SATA. You're right though it should let me assign a drive letter. Although you'd assume it already had one considering it's an OS on the HDD.

I read about having to 'import' the disk, maybe that would work? Running out of ideas here. Eek!

 

Maybe I am wrong but if your not using them as SATA just as IDE then does master/slave not come into it?

So am I reading you right one of the HDD has an os on it and you have put that into a new machine along with a second drive?

If so you may have to using the windows disk and boot from the cd as you would a fresh install so it loads drivers etc, it seems to me that something is missing somewhere.

I could be wrong though.

 

Think there's a crossed wire here.

The setup is thus:

1. I am using a Server 2003 box. This is my main system I am using to attach the drive to.

2. I have a 200gb SATA HDD removed from a Toshiba laptop. This has Vista installed on it OEM etc.

3. I put the laptop HDD in to an external HDD enclosure. It is connected to the Server 2003 box via USB.

4. Server 2003 won't read the drive 110%. Disk management sees it but won't let me do anything with it.

5. If I connect the USB enclosure to my XP Pro laptop via USB, it works no problem, I can explore the HDD.

6. As a side note, I cannot make an image of the HDD using Acronis or Ghost. A scandisk says the HDD has no errors either.

 

You need to format the drive and then assign a letter to it.

 

It would seem to me that you can't use the drive from within server 2003 because the disk has vista on it, I am thinking you will have to configure sever to reconise the OS because instead of it just looking for data it is coming up against on OS which it doesn't know.

maybe doing some sort of installation whilst keeping the files on HDD will do.

I could be totally wrong but thats what it seems to me.

 

The operating system on the drive shouldn't be an issue, but the format in which the drive is in (ie NTFS, FAT 32, etc) should be. As Vista is NTFS and as Server 2003 recognises NTFS it should work.

Bit of an odd one there.

 

My thoughts exactly. Have I missed something in my Server 2003 config? The fact an OS is on the disk is neither here nor there, it's the file system that matters really.

I cannot format the disk as I need to make an image of it as it contains the clients data that I need later. Plus if the client wants to go back to Vista at any point, then I have an image to restore to the HDD.

I just can't seem to get the thing to register in Server 2003. Sure, I can save hassle and use my XP Pro laptop to store the image. But:

a. it's my personal laptop i'm using

b. my laptop doesn't have sufficient storage to keep this image of the HDD so ideally i need to store it on my Server 2003 box, it's the only alternative I have.

Thanks for all the input so far all. We'll crack this yet!

 

Just a thought but here it goes.

Vista has a newer version of NTFS if I am not mistaken and if the drive is showing up in the disk managent console then the OS is recognizing it. What you want to do is try and initialize the drive. Here is a link that explains how to do this. Don't bother looking at the format part because I can see that that is not what your objective here is.

Keep in mind I never performed this task before so I don't know how it behaves, it could very well do something to the drive that you don't want happening. But like I said it's just a thought.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the info there. I was hoping the initialize wizard would work too, but nothing appears to happen. I did however somehow manage to assign a drive letter to the larger partition on the drive. It's a 200gb SATA but has a 1.something gb partition on it.

Anyway, I can get Server 2003 to basically read the drive now (don't ask me how it just sort of 'happened'!). I ran an OnTrack diagnostic on it again and it's telling me the drive has a bunch of I/O errors, too many to list it claims on the end report.

I'm wondering now if the HDD is damaged (and repairable?) or if this is some sort of 'Vista induced issue' that I am unaware of. perhaps (it's a new one on me) due to the new version of NTFS that Vista uses?

I have to approach this one with a due sense of over-cautiousness as I cannot afford to wreck the clients HDD. If this is a problem caused by Vista then it's a very smelly one and it makes me hate Vista with even more wrath, fury and an extensive dictionary of filthy words than I already do now!!

More to the point, if I could just get the damn drive to image using Acronis, Ghost or another recommended software then I can just format the HDD and install XP Pro and everyone is happy! Well, aside from the fact I still have to find XP drivers for the Toshiba laptop which is going to be a nightmare of epic proportions!

 

What are the errors that you get when you run ghost? I know I get errors trying to run ghost when I don't properly shutdown the pc. I'll get an MFT error and I just have to restart the pc and shut it down properly.

 

Ghost just threw up an unable to image error. It never explained why.

Get this though for bizarre events! I used Acronis again but tried to image the external drive via making an Acronis boot CD rather than image it under the GUI version while running the Server 2003 OS. I previously tried this with Ghost but the image still did not work.

It only went and finally imaged! I checked the *.tib for integrity and all seems well and good! The only thing left to do now is format the drive and pray to God I can find XP drivers for the Toshiba laptop...

Thanks for all the advice and info folks. Quite a bizarre ending to all of this I think you'll agree!

Just out of curiosity and to save me a monumental mental breakdown, does anybody know of a reliable place for Toshiba XP laptop drivers? Obviously the Toshiba website, but for most of these new Vista laptops they produce, their seems to be a total lack of XP drivers.

The model of the laptop is thus: Toshiba Satellite A205-S4777

Slainte.