EISA Configuration Boot Code Is Replaced on Mirror Drives

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HP NetServer Navigator and some other manufacturers' EISA utilities create a small EISA partition on the hard drive so that it can prompt you with a choice to run the EISA configuration at startup.

To have this on both primary and secondary mirror drives, you must first establish the EISA partition separately before installing Windows NT.

If you view this partition in a sector editor like Norton Diskedit or Microsoft Disk Probe (Dskprobe.exe), you will find the partition type to be type 12. To Disk Administrator, this partition is properly recognized as and EISA partition. After installing Windows NT, when you view the master boot record on the secondary drive, but before establishing the mirror, you will see the data in the master boot record that is used to prompt the user for EISA configuration on both drives.

After establishing and generating the mirror, the MBR on the secondary drive is replaced with a universal master boot record, which deletes the EISA prompt information. None of the partition table entries are damaged. The drive is still type 12, although none of the EISA boot information remains.

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