Hi Sandeep,
to answer your questions (in capitols, I'm not yelling rather differentiating my text from your text.)
1) Do you have a hardware RAID controller? YES. Are you using software RAID? NOT TO MY KNOWLEDGE, I USED DISK UTILITIES TO SET THE HARDWARE RAID CONTROLLER PRIOR TO SBS INSTALLATION.
2. Did you run a disk utility from the drive manufacturer? E.g. Seatools for Seagate. YES, NO HARD DISK ERRORS.
3. Do you have an eSATA/USB 3.0 backup drive? Copying 35GB on an eSATA/USB drive would take about 5-10 minutes which is why Bert and I strongly recommend them over USB 2.0. NO I DON'T, BUT I DEFINITELY SEE THE TIME ADVANTAGE AND THAT'S A FUTURE PLAN WHEN MY PERSONAL LIFE SETTLES DOWN. (GETTING MARRIED IN A FEW MONTHs)
4. What do you mean 8 hard drives as one big hard drive? Did you do a software RAID 0?! I WAS OVERSIMPLIFYING, SORRY. THE OS IS ON A RAID 1, 2 DRIVES PLUS 1 HOT SPARE (3 TOTAL DRIVES). THE DATA IS ON A RAID 5, 4 DRIVES PLUS 1 HOT SPARE 5 TOTAL DRIVES).
Maybe I misunderstand how virtual disk functions. If for example 3 drives are setup as a RAID 5, data is distributed across those 3 drives in a redundant manner so 1 can go down yet the data remains retrievable. However the OS "sees" 1 disk, not 3. If I don't understand virtual disk correctly, please educate.
