The server has an odd history which explains the current odd setup, so don't get hung up on that part.
Config:
SBS2008, all drives connected to a hardware RAID controller. Two drives are configured as a hardware mirror, and the third drive is configured as a non-RAID drive on the same controller. In Windows the "two" drives are configured as a software mirror. So yes,
this is kind of a three-disk hardware and software mirror. We don't want to keep it this way. The non-RAID drive was/is the original boot drive.
Goal:
Break the software mirror and physically remove the non-RAID drive, so that the server is running only on the two drives in the hardware mirror.
Problem:
I pulled the single original drive and the system would not boot, couldn't even get the F8 boot menu. Startup Repair doesn't even recognize that Windows is on the drive (yes, BIOS order is correct and RAID drivers installed ;-). I played around with diskpart
to break the mirror, set the C partition as active, etc... but all I managed to do was hose the config on that drive and was nowhere closer to getting the system to boot. I took a deep breath and just reconnected the original non-RAD drive and booted the system
with that and re-synced the second drive. Back to original functioning config now.
Rant:
What the heck is the point of a software mirror if the system won't boot from the secondary plex automatically on primary failure!!! This is SBS2008, not NT5! Grr.
With that out of the way I appreciate any suggesitons on how to proceed from here to ensure that the system will boot to the secondary plex and the software mirror is broken. Thansk!