Disk Administrator Cannot Always Save Disk Configuration

The information in this article applies to:

• Microsoft Windows NT operating system version 3.1
• Microsoft Windows NT Advanced Server version 3.1
• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 3.5 and 3.51
• Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 3.5 and 3.51
• Microsoft Windows NT Workstation versions 4.0
• Microsoft Windows NT Server versions 4.0

SYMPTOMS

Disk Administrator allows you to save configuration information about currently defined drive letters, volume sets, stripe sets with parity, and mirror sets to a floppy disk that can be restored if Windows NT needs to be reinstalled or the drive sets need to be moved to another system.

This is accomplished by running Disk Administrator and selecting the partition, configuration, save or restore options.

Disk Administrator prompts you to insert a formatted disk into A: and copies the SYSTEM registry hive containing the configuration information onto the disk. If the SYSTEM registry hive is too large to fit on the disk the following error is displayed.

   ERROR: There is not enough space on the disk.

   ERROR: The configuration registry database is corrupt.

CAUSE

Disk Administrator does not compress the SYSTEM registry hive prior to copying it to the disk. Even though it reports that there is not enough space on the disk to store the information, it still makes a zero byte SYSTEM. File on the disk. If you try the save operation again using the same disk, the SYSTEM. file is first read by Disk Administrator and is considered to be corrupt because it is zero bytes in size and doesn't contain valid registry information.

RESOLUTION

Use the Rdisk.exe utility to "UPDATE REPAIR INFO" and make a current emergency repair disk (ERD). This ERD will contain the disk configuration information that can be used during a restore at a later time.

NOTE: The repair disk created during initial Windows NT Setup will not contain the disk configuration information--you must use an ERD that has been updated using the Rdisk.exe utility as stated above.

If you try to use the ERD directly to restore configuration information, Disk Administrator will report the following:

   ERROR: The system cannot find the file specified.

To use the ERD to restore configuration information, perform the following steps:

1. Make a directory structure on any local drive as follows:

         Winnterd\System32\Config
   

2. Copy the SYSTEM._ file from the emergency repair disk to the Config directory you made in step 1 above.

3. Use the expand utility to expand the compressed system._ file. Type expand.exe system._ system

4. Open Disk administrator and select partition, configuration, search

5. Disk administrator will search all the local drives for a valid registry file to restore the disk configuration information from. Select the entry that corresponds to the directory you made in step 1:

         C:\WINNTERD
   

6. Make sure that the device Ftdisk is configured to start at boot time in the Control Panel\Devices tool. This is disabled by default on newly installed systems that don't have fault tolerant devices configured. This driver is necessary to support fault tolerant configurations.

7. After you perform a normal shutdown and restart, all of the previously unknown partitions and volumes should be intact and accessible.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Windows NT version 3.x We are researching this problem and will post new information here in the Microsoft Knowledge Base as it becomes available.