Re: Hard drive replacement

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In article <uiV0hbdZFHA.616@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Gary S <garysmith@del
etethis.cummingsandsmith.com> writes
>Use Ghost to clone the old disk to the new one. This worked easily for me in
>a very similar situation. You can also use this method to change the size of
>the system partition if you want at the same time.
>"Andrew M. Saucci, Jr." <spam-only@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>news:%230mBk6yYFHA.2756@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> I have an SBS 2000 server whose two software-mirrored 18 GB SCSI
>> hard drives are flaky. I have two 36 GB SCSI drives to replace them and
>> figured that since the existing drives are still usable (though
>unreliable)
>> I could remirror the old partitions onto the new drives, remove the old
>> drives, and reboot. I have no trouble remirroring, but I simply cannot
>boot
>> from the new drives. I definitely want the old drives out of the server
>> altogether. I tried several methods for getting the new drives to boot,
>> including some found here but had no luck. I finally found a Microsoft
>> article that suggests that this is *lots* trickier than I had imagined. My
>> next two options are LiveState Recovery (already installed on the server)
>or
>> Ghost 2003 (which allows a direct disk-to-disk clone). If I can't make
>> either of those work, I may have to reinstall SBS 2000 and recover from a
>> tape drive, or do a convoluted three-partition round-robin copy of all the
>> files onto freshly formatted partitions. Any other ideas?
>>
>>
>
>
If you do not have any partitioning software, and do not do this sort of
thing often, you can download a 15 day trial of Acronis DiskImage.

I have just used this on a Clients (home) machine. - Built and supplied
by a third party. Had what I thought were two 80GB HDD's in a mirror by
an add-in controller card. But, turned out to be two 40GB drives in a
Raid0 (striped) configuration. Machine would say the mirror was bad one
boot in five.
I was going to remove the 'bad' disk, replace, and let the controller
rebuild the mirror. - No such luck!
"No Problem". Thinks I, I can just add another disk and mirror to that.
Controller not clever enough to mirror two drives onto one. :-(
No go with mirroring in Windows (machine is W2k Prof.) as it isn't a
server OS. - Not the first time I have forgotten this! :-(
So, added new disk, grabbed Acronis, copied over, and got a little more
space on the partition. Then put a second 80GB drive in, and created a
Raid1 (mirror) using the controller.
Hay presto, Client now has two new drives, mirrored in hardware. All I
have to do now is download some drive testing software from the
manufacturers site, and work out which drive to bin!

Normal caveats, no connection with Acronis, just impressed with a
Company prepared to 'give away' a fully working (if time limited)
version of something like this.
Personally, I found it less confusing than other products. - If I had
had identical drives, I may have been as confused as in the past!

Now the question!
Same Client has SBS 2k. System (C:\ drive) is a small partition on a
larger drive, and is now filling up. - Backups OK, so not an Exchange
log problem.
Said Server is maintained by a third party, and they have just put GFI
Mail Essentials on it. Logs and databases moved to the 'Data' partition.
This leaves about 500MB free on C:. - I feel this is not enough.

My thoughts are:
1. Uninstall GFI, and move it to the Data drive. - This would free some
space, but would mean that 'Apps' would be split. This does not appeal,
as it could add confusion, and just seems 'messy'.
2. Repartition the drive, to make C: bigger. - I would prefer this.
Gives more breathing space, and keeps things 'where they should be'.

What are the Groups thoughts on re-partitioning a 'live' Server?

TIA,
Phil Partridge
philp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Remove the grit to reply
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