how to replace a HD for a Domain server?

[kakakaka77]

Hi,
I have a domain server running Windows server 2003, and recently recieved eventlog error: eventid #7 (The device,\Device\Harddisk0, has a bad block)

for my understanding is the HD is going to die, and I think I need to replace it with a new HD. what should I do? I have the backups of system-state and the data files I need.

Great thanks!

 

[58sniper]

Is that drive part of a RAID array? If so, then normal replacement would be fine.

Pat Richard MVP
Plan for performance, and capacity takes care of itself. Plan for capacity, and suffer poor performance.

http://www.ucblogs.net/blogs/exchange/

 

[kakakaka77]

Thank you for reply.

I am sorry it's an old server, and I dont think the hard drive is in the RAID array. It is a single Hard disk.

Can I just make a full backup of the current hard drive and then restore on the new hard drive? Am I going to lose anything as it's a domain server (AD, DNS, etc)? If I can, which backup tool can do that? can NTBACKUP do that job?

Thank you !!

 

[Roadki11]

Use what ever flavor of disk cloning software you like, I have done this with ghost a few times with no issues. Slave a new hard drive in the server and do a disk to disk clone, you can even resize the partition on the fly. Pull the old hard drive put the new one as primary and you should be good to go. Probably only take you an hour or so depending on how much data is on the old drive.

RoadKi11

"This apparent fear reaction is typical, rather than try to solve technical problems technically, policy solutions are often chosen." - Fred Cohen

 

[kakakaka77]

Thank you for your step by step explain,Roadki11.

I have another question,
Does the new hard drive need to be the extractly same with the old one? I have read someone said because we are going to use the backup, which means using the same register key, it will not loading the system if we are using the differnt hardware.

Thank you!!

 

[Roadki11]

No it doesn't need to be the same, it can be a completely different brand and bigger if you want.

RoadKi11

"This apparent fear reaction is typical, rather than try to solve technical problems technically, policy solutions are often chosen." - Fred Cohen