Re: Hard drive replacement

What's this 'sleep' thing????
but no, I'm AU and it's still early evening.

471 put of 3900 is 12%, that drive's thrashing itself silly dude.

As you (almost) suggest, there's not much more you can easily move, we must
do something about the partition size.

There is one alternative I didn't mention earlier www.sbsmigration.com. A
Swing It! style migration, either to new hardware or back to the same box,
could address the issue. Swinging to new hardware your downtime is the the
time it takes to copy the data (including Exchange) from one system to
another. The Swing It! process is 100% based on MS documented methods and
though the process itself is not endorsed by MS the end result is a fully
supportable system. A swing back to same hardware would involve more
downtime than either a swing to new or dealing with the partition size via
third party tools but again, results in a 100% supportable system.

"Phil Partridge" <philp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:DzaZWAA6iXnCFw5K@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Wow!
> Thanks for the quick response. - I tend to expect *most* the support to
> come from the States. Either you are not states-side, you never sleep,
> or you are doing an overnight attack on a Clients Server. ;-)
>
> In article <uCxn7HoZFHA.2664@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, SuperGumby [SBS MVP]
> <not@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
>>MS do not support systems with partitions which have had their size
>>adjusted
>>by third party utilities.
>>MS also do not support systems with drives which have been restored from
>>images by third party tools (ghost, acronis, whatever).
>
> I can see why they would say that.
>
>>
>>The only method MS officially supported is backup/delete and recreate
>>partitions of changed size/restore.
>
> See above.. A PITA to actually do.
>
>>
>>Though MS do not officially support drives modified in this manner I have
>>never hit a problem which MS has blamed on the adjustment. They have never
>>withdrawn support, for me, due to this issue, but I gotta admit, I don't
>>call them much.
>
> Me neither.. Last time for SBS was a 4.0 to 4.0a (I think) which went
> horribly weong, and I ended up re-creating all the special folder
> permissions manually. Yeuck!
> The 4.0a to 4.5 went without a hitch some months later.
>
>>
>>If that OS partition with 500MB free is any bigger than 2GB it is
>>suffering
>>horrendous performance issues. NTFS performance degrades when the drive
>>gets
>>to about 30% free space, at 20% free space the degradation is significant,
>>at 10% free space the system will _-*CRAWL*-_. You MUST use one of the
>>above
>>methods to rectify the problem.
>
> Hmmmm..
> I don't remember exactly how the drives a configured (physically that
> is) Win2k just sees one drive, partitioned into two:
> Win2k(C:\) 3.90GB total, 471MB free
> Data(E:\) 64.5GB total, 20.8GB free
>
> The only way to be sure 'what's what' would be to be onsite for a
> reboot, and hit the SCSI BIOS to see how many, and how big.
>
> Pagefile, Exchange DB's/Store, ClientApps, Shared Folders, are all on
> the Data partition already. Don't see how I can get much more off the
> system partition.
>
> Biggest problem is getting at the system 'out of hours'.
>
>>
>>"Phil Partridge" <philp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
>>news:+06U2AAAmWnCFwvi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>> 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
>>
>>
>
> Phil Partridge
> philp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Remove the grit to reply


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