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Swapping a hard drive on the server?

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by dragon_45 2 views

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I have a small network with under 10 units, most of the time we only have 5 units active. With Netware 4.10. Everything works fine. We have a low budget!! We have no website or need for one! I want to replace the old hard drive.

Should the DOS partition only have a DOS boot. A NON windows environment?

What format is best on the DOS partition? FAT32? NTFS possible?

What format options do I have on the Novell partition? If any?

Can I reinstall 4.10 on the new hard drive, set everything up. Then restore selective items. Then delete the old license from the old server?? Will it allow me to reinstall the second time before delete the first license?

Any suggestions or outlines on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated. I want make it as painless and quick as possible.

Thanks
Richard F. Bolha

7 replies

by shanghai sam

If you have two computers the Upgrade Wizard 6.0 works great, however you are on a small budget so that is highly unlikely. Server Magic from PowerQuest can be used to recreate or copy the partitions (Including SYS) to the slave drive (New disk) then it hides the SYS volume while you reboot. This will still use the old DOS partition (old hard drive) to boot to until you make the new drive the master and recreate the DOS partition on the new hard drive. Server Magic is also probably not in yourbudget. So I would recommend:

Make not of the Volume names and rights to the directories, also user and group rights. Put the new hardrive (IDE or SCSI?) in the server. Netware creates it's own DOS partition when you install it, you only decidewhat size to make the partition. I recommend 400 to 500MB for 4.10 for all the patches. If you have a tape backup or even a Desktop copy of the partitions, I would recommend a fresh install on the new hard drive and recreate your partitions with the larger sizes. Bring up te server. Recreate your users, groups, printer objects, and directory rights. With only 10 users this will be easier than trying to copy your nds to the new server.

by isys

You won't need more than about 50 MB for your DOS partition. It only holds your initial DOS boot record and whatever files Novell needs to do its initial load.

Make a full tape backup of everything, including NDS. It souds like you only have one volume so that shouldn't take too long. Then install the new hard drive and install Netware. It will automatically create the DOS partition. Install the backup software and restore the tape. Your NDS and volume information should be restored.
Could you just add another drive? If you can install the drive and the server BIOS see it, you can add another drive to the existing volume and not have to go through the bother of backup and restore on a new disk.

by dragon_45

If I add a hard drive to the volume. What is the procedure to get it formated? Would it just be G: drive with F: ? Could I then just balance the load between the drives? I have USB seagate 20 Gb tapestor tape backup. Is there any effect as far as huge slow on the server?

Backing up and restoring is not a problem if I just replace the hard drive. However I would still need to add the users and print server stuff.

Thanks Rich

by dragon_45

I will probably just swap my hard drive. I am increasing my space enough. I am also adding a PC 133 controller card. I think my old drive is PC 66. So I am back a small DOS partition with Novell partition with Netware 4.1. Can I just install 4.1 nowsetup my users and printer stuff now? Will novell install again? Can I uninstall the same license later? Or just reformat. Off the record?? I need more advice? I do not have my answer yet. Anyone else out there?

Thanks
Richard Bolha
hvl@one.net

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