After imaging 2003 OS, cannot boot up

[bobbyafra]

Hi,

Before making any changes to our production server, I wanted to image the Domain controller and copy it to a stand-alone PC.
So I imaged the OS from the server (HP Proliant running RAID 5) using Drivesnap. I restored the image onto a single IDE hard drive on an HP PC. But when I try booting it up, all I get is a blinking cursor on the upper left corner. I tried fdisk /mbr, but that did not work. What am I missing here?

TIA

 

[TheLad]

The image restore to a PC will not work as the PC will not have any of the hardware that the server has. For example, server is SCSI and PC is IDE. If you are restoring an image like this, it has to be to the same or very similar hardware. Even if it did boot, you would probably experience blue screens on bootup because the OS contains server hardware drivers not PC hardware drivers

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[Cstorms]

I am not sure how relevant this is, but while taking and restoring images of our DC using acronis, it restored fine to some crappy hardware (p3 866 mhz single hdd), however I do know that imaging RAID5 (and similar raids) has a very tempermental fit when restoring to other RAIDs, I highly doubt its supported by many imaging vendors.

 

[Roadki11]

If you are not going to restore to similar hardware the best way to do this is restore to vmware. I do this all the time if i want to test a major change(software or configuration) to a production server. I will ghost it to dvd then restore it to vmware and run the p2v converter on it both are free to use. Never had a problem moving a physical raid to a vmware virtual drive.

just my 2 cents,

RoadKi11

 

[bobbyafra]

Thanks for all your input everybody. ROADKi11, what version of Ghost do you use to image servers? I wasn't aware that Ghost can image a running server, especially running on RAID. If Ghost can do it, i will give it a try.

 

[technome]

I have done an image clone of a AD DC from a Lsilogic based raid to IDE, worked without a hitch with Acronis on the same mobo. Since you ended with a blinking cursor, hardware differences are the issue. Try a "repair" install.


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[Roadki11]

Ive used ghost 2003 and ghost 11 to image servers. The methode i use most of the time(ghosting) requires taking the server down, but vmware's new utility called VMWare Converter will convert a physical machine to a vertual machine on the fly without taking the physical server offline. I have used a few times with good results. its pretty simple to use also. It doesnt damage or alter the physical machine.

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

RoadKi11