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Replace hard drive on Windows 2003 SBS server

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by hgrossman

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Before purchasing any product, I want to make sure that it is the right product. I have a Windows 2003 SBS server where drive 1 currently is a 80 GB SATA drive containing C: and E: drives and drive 2 is a 80 GB SATA drive that contains the D: drive (it came this way). I want to put all 3 on the same physical drive, add additional space and make the 2nd physical drive a mirror of the first. My plan is to remove physical drive 2 (80 GB drive D and replace it with a 250 GB SATA drive and clone drive 1 to this new drive. Then, remove the 1st physical drive and replace it with physical drive 2 (80 GB drive D: and move the D: drive to the new 250 GB drive (so C:, D; and E will all be on that drive). Then remove the old 80 GB drive and replace it with identical 250 GB drive and set up mirroring between the 2 250 GB drives.

Any reason this shouldn't work?

What products will do the cloning that I need to do? Will Ghost Solution Suite ($40) do it? I also found Acronis and Partition Magic which seem like they would do it but are much more expensive.

7 replies

by clintonc1

Did it work? What snags did you hit? Do you have any advice?

by cannot-bear

After reading carefully, I understood what hgrossman wants to do, but it is too complex.

If there is partitions on a hard drive, you cannot build hardware raid 1 without data loss, the only method is to convert the two disks to dynamic, the other dynamic disk should be unallocated, "Add Mirror" in disk management.

Please check this method:
1. Resize C or E to be smaller and get some unallocated space;
2. Copy D to this unallocated;
3. Copy the entire 80G disk to a 250G disk;
4. Boot from the new disk and convert the two 250G disk to dynamic in Disk Management.
5. After reboot, "Add Mirror" in DM

As dynamic disk has mang shortage, I suggest you copy to hardware RAID, the method is below:
1. Resize C or E to be smaller and get some unallocated space;
2. Copy D to this unallocated;
3. Build RAID1 with two 250G disk;
4. Copy the 80G disk to the raid virtual disk.

To achieve this, you only need one SW and several steps. I recommend easeus partition master, it can resize partitions (step 1)
copy partition (step 2)
copy disk (step 3 or 4)
It is cost-effective, free for home users, around 100 for server, worth to try.
http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/disk-copy.htm
http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/partition-copy.htm

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