server backup and networking a drive question

[janetg]

hi all - i have an hp490 mediasmart server that runs nightly backups for me - gives me peace of mind....mostly..



this weekend it behaved a little strangely and i could not get it to come online - so my question is...



if i map a network drive to behave as a regular drive...if the main server goes down, does that data remain on 'THE' drive i put it on? essentially meaning, if i took the drives out one by one, would they be usable in a regular system with the data on them?



currently the hp server i believe spreads things out across the 4 drives, which is fine for some things.. other things i would want to be recoverable if the server main drive goes down. i hope that makes sense?



thanks for replying..

[Rson]

Yes, if you have a drive mapped to a external or server, you should in theory be able to pull the drive and connect it as a slave via a external case or adapter. This is assuming there isn't a RAID config to the drives and they are on Windows platform.

If they are spanned, you will have trouble recovering because chances are they are Mirrored and Striped. This places data split between 2 drives and Mirrored on the other drives. It is doable, but "involved"