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Replacing HDD's in Netware 4.x

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by E.Eliveld 1 view

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Hello,

I have to replace the harddisks in a Novell 4.x server. My plan is first to create a prim. part. on the new disk that will hold the dos/nwserver part. I can copy the contents from disk to disk. The Novell volumes are another story. I was planning to hang the new disk under the old one, create a few novell volumes (eg. sys2 / app2 / etc2) and copy the content to them. However I'm troubled with the sys volume. I dont not remember how to do this.

An idea I had was just change the drives, start Novell. Because Netware can not find the sys volume anymore I will have to mount the sys2 volume by hand. Can I rename the sys2 volume after that to sys?

Does anybody has a safe idea ;-)

Thanks people!

6 replies

by estebandelatorre

The process is simple if you have only one server in the tree, but in case of more than one server, the "thing" is more complex.

Start running a dsrepair, and if no error, continue. "ServerS" should be OK.
If you have one "standart" server, consider install a new paralel server and move data from one to other. The heavy work will be to redefine nds users, printers, queues, etc

If you have services running in the server, and plenty of users and objects, you have to do "a hardware upgrade".
1.- Setup new server with a fresh installation, with a basic NDS setup and same sp level as the old server. Create volumes names as old server and let them just created (same lenght, you can extend later!)
2.- Have a wks client connected to BOTH servers (sys: root)
3.- load dsmaint.nlm in old, and select prepare server for harware upgrade. This will create a file (you are prompted for a name) in the root of the sys: old server
3.5.- Now server old is unusable, remove lan cable but let it running. You can reverse the process in case of a failure. (see 5)
4.- Copy with the wks the file from old server to new server.
5.- load dsmaint in server new and perform "restore NDS from hw upgrade"
6.- Step 3 and 6 are very shorts, and from nowyou have the nds objects, passwords, queues, etc,etc ready.
7.- Restore data volumes. (you can Now, also restore the sys: volume, replacing all existing files .

Hope it helps!!!

by E.Eliveld

Thanks for the answer. However I'm looking for a 'simple' way to change the disks on a single Netware 4 server. There are no other NW servers.

Greetings.

by dle

Best and safest method:
1. Shutdown all databases or application NLMs that are currently running on the server.
2. Perform a complete backup with NDS aware backup software so that you can backup the files with NDS information.
3. Make a copy of AUTOEXEC.NCF and STARTUP.NCF to a diskette for reference.
4. Shut down the server. Replace the hard drives and install a new copy of NetWare. Create the volumes according to your needs. The first volume created will always be SYS.
5. Installthe backup software and start the restore process.

Since I am not sure on how your hard disks are set up, RAID5, mirroring, etc... the above method should work even though it will take time, depending on how much data you have on the disk volumes.

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