Moving Installation from Dynamic Disks to Hardware RAID 2

[gavm99]

Hi all,

We currently have a Small Business Server which has 2 x SATA Hard Disks installed which are Windows Dynamic Disks which are mirrored.

We now want to move this to a hardware RAID, so therefore we won't be using Dynamic Disks.

Is there anyway at all I can keep my existing installation?

Thanks.

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[wahnula]

Is there anyway at all I can keep my existing installation?

I assume you are using Windows RAID since you mention Dynamic Disks. For all intents and purposes, this is treated the same as hardware RAID once you get into Windows. The goal would be to clone the existing array to a single, extra disk. Then boot to that disk to make sure everything is OK, then clone that disk to your new array.

You may get some errors about a missing disk, that's OK. The point is you would like to be able to boot to the image (clone) so you could recover the initial install at any time. To do the cloning process I recommend grabbing one of the few remaining copies of Ghost 2003, which works with SBS. Acronis wants US$700 for their server TrueImage, Ghost 2003 is still available through eBay for ~$USD30.

Anyway install the hardware RAID card (I do not recommend onboard RAID controllers, construct the array in RAID BIOS, then boot into Windows using the clone. Supply the RAID drivers to this disk after Found New Hardware pops up.

The beauty of this method is at any point you should be able to go back to your original install without consequences. If you want to re-use your current drives, you can try it, but no guarantees. I have found the Dynamic-to-non-Dynamic to be a non-issue once you leave Windows RAID behind.


Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[gavm99]

Hi Tony,

Your plan of action is basically exactly what I had planned to do, but I was concerned there wasn't a product out there that supported Dynamic Diks.

I had already installed the latest version of Symantec System Recovery and that can't see my Dynamic Disks.

I will try and get hold of Ghost!!

Thanks.

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[wahnula]

Gav,

What are you currently using as a RAID controller? Motherboard chip or Windows?

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[gavm99]

Hi Tony,

Currently using Windows, moving over to a PCI-E RAID Card.

Thanks.

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[gavm99]

Just picked up Ghost 2003 for £4.50!!! Bargain!!

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[wahnula]

Great!!! First thing I would do is make a backup copy of Ghost 2003 and squirrel it away! Since you're using Windows for your RAID, you can run Ghost from within Windows, just specify the C: drive and the destination drive (DOUBLE-CHECK THESE ARE CORRECT!). I don't think Dynamic vs. non-Dynamic will matter, but yours is a unique setup, I guess we'll find out.

Worst case, you break the mirror and return a disk to non-dynamic for the cloning. Let us know how it goes. Either way you just bought a great tool for SBS & Server 2003, I'd be lost without the ability to clone my drives & arrays within SBS...I've done it with both the RAID 1 OS array (quasi-hardware, used MB controller) and my RAID 5 data array when I changed from onboard controller to hardware card, worked a treat each time. I've also used it to clone the backup drive over USB, as well as on clients when I upgrade their HDDs. You will get a lot of use from it, I know I do mine.

Just be sure to shut down the PC after the cloning process is complete and disconnect the source HDDs before rebooting, so the clone gets the C: letter.

Your performance should increase dramatically, since your processor and OS are now removed from the RAID sub-system.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[technome]

Agree with Wahnula, Ghost 2003 will work, with the exact procedure he recommends. A while back I ran into a machine which someone had converted the SCSI drives to Dynamic, and I needed to clone to a standard IDE. Ghost did not mind the Dynamic disks, cloning to the IDE, leaving it as "basic". Tried Acronis 9 server first, which balked at having Dynamic disks in the scenario.


........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[gavm99]

Hi all,

There seems to a problem with Ghost and SATA hard disks.

I have installed Ghost. I setup a job to ghost the boot partition to a USB drive as a test. Upon reboot it entered the Ghost blue and grey screen but just hung there.

I then went back into Windows and setup another job to clone my boot partition to a new SATA disk, this does the same thing. It goes the blue and grey ghost screen and does nothing.

I have done a very quick Google and it doesn't appear ghost doesn't like SATA disks.

Has anyone come across this? Any ideas how to fix this? Or perhaps a different solution to image my dynamic disks?

Thanks.

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[wahnula]

Gav,

I have never had a problem w/ Ghost 2003 and SATA, IDE, or RAID, but I did have a problem with USB. It did not use the USB 2.0 driver, used 1.1 instead, and the clone took many hours and failed. But I can attest to it working between IDE & SATA drives, as that is how I ping-ponged my data from SATA RAID array-to-IDE single drive-to SATA RAID array on a different controller.

Are you using it within Windows or via a command prompt? I know people swear by cmd but I've always used it within Windows, then let it schedule the clone after reboot.

The only thing I can think of is that the dynamic array is complicating things, I've little experience with them. As an experiment, you could take a spare SATA disk, convert it to dynamic, load it up with an OS and/or data, then convert back to basic and check function. If it's OK (it should be) then you could remove one dynamic disk from your mirror, convert the other to basic, and clone from there. If it fails, you will still have an original dynamic disk to re-create the mirror.

I know that Ghost 2003 works on SBS 2003, and also know it works on SATA disks within SBS. Keep trying different configurations. If it's seeing the drives, it should be able to clone one to the other. I might try it with a small desktop HDD to make sure the program CD is OK.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[gavm99]

Hi Tony,

I'm using it within Windows, I set-up the job and then reboot to let it do its stuff.

In relation to your suggestion about converting the Dynamic Disk to Basic - I didn't think you could do this? I thought once it is Dynamic with an OS installed, it can't be reverted back?

Thanks.



Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[wahnula]

gavm99,

You are correct:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314343

I was under the impression that disks could be toggled back & forth from dynamic to basic...WRONG! Sorry for the bum steer. At least the program was cheap and trust me, you will get some use out of it. I know that dynamic disks are hard to see outside Windows, but I thought running Ghost from within Windows would prevent that...guess I was WRONG again.

I will step back and hopefully someone else will have a workable solution. I am racking my brains trying to come up with a solution (cloning w/ Linux???...Installing the disk into a non-dynamic OS like XP Home???...using Ghost in cmd line???) but I do not want to lead you farther astray. Apologies...

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[gavm99]

Hi Tony (and all),

I have made some progress on this front.

I have managed to Ghost the install to another SATA hard disk.

My problem is this now though, if I boot the SATA hard disk directly from the motherboard it boots fine.

However when I boot with it connected to the new RAID card I get a BSOD shortly after the Windows 2003 loading screen.

I think it is because my OS doesn't know about the RAID card in terms of drivers?

Any ideas anyone?

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[gavm99]

Hi all,

I have now completed the move from Dynamic Disks to my new hardware RAID!! And I didn't lose any data!

In summary, here is how I did it:

1. Installed the new RAID card into my SBS Server but did not attach any disks. Booted into SBS and installed the drivers for the RAID card (this overcame the BSOD problem above)
2. Used Ghost to backup my SBS install to an IDE disk
3. Installed the new RAID card in my desktop PC (running XP) and configured the disks into a hardware RAID(these were my old Dynamic Disks)
4. Used Ghost to restore from the IDE disk to the new RAID set
5. Put the RAID card and disks back into the SBS server and booted back into my original install!!

That looks very simple looking at it now, but because of all the trial and error along the way (I won't bore you with all of this) it took a number hours!!

Anyway time for bed now, next Saturday I'm defiantly out on the beer!!

Thanks all, and Tony your right, Ghost is superb!



Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[wahnula]

Nobody is happier than me right now except perhaps you. There is no worse feeling that offering honest advice and having it turn out to be incorrect, or based on less-than-fact. My only consolation was the cheap price of my suggestion.

Put an empty glass on the counter when have at the beer, that would be mine if we weren't separated by a few thousand miles and an ocean!

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[gavm99]

Hi Tony,

Don't worry about it, yout advice is always top drawer and always appreciated!!!

Ghost is a fab tool, it was a bargain and I needed it in the end anyway!!

Thanks again.

Gavin Moorhouse

http://www.lucidcomputersolutions.co.uk

Interested in my personal blog?

http://www.thelucidview.co.uk

 

[skjmpark]

Hi all,

I found the info here, especially with this thread, so helpful that I decided to join so I could post my experience so far.

Two comments about things above:

- while you can NOT go from dynamic to basic within Microsoft's interface, you will (through the Ghost 2003 clone process) go from dynamic to basic

- I thought that my computer had frozen because it went to Ghost's blue/grey screen and hung there for a while.. When I tried this before, I reset a couple times and finally went back to Windows. After a night's sleep, I tried again with that blue/grey screen again. This time, I watched the HDD light in the front of the computer and noticed that there was occasional activity going on. So, I let the computer sit there and do its thing. After about 10-15 minutes, the blue/grey screen went into "active" mode and things are moving now (as I type).

So I'm now waiting for Ghost 2003 to finish its thing so I can yank the old HDD out and put in the newly ghosted new HDD in. Hopefully it'll boot from the new HDD w/o fussing with the MBR and such.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

FYI, here is my situation and reason for going through this:

I'm running a Windows 2003 server for dental office. I originally put in a WD Raptor 75GB a few years ago, but now it's down to 2.5GB of available space.

I just bought a 300GB WD VelociRaptor HDD. Who knows if the server / dental-software can even take advantage of the extra $$ for the VelociRaptor, but hopefully so. There are about 12 workstations that bang on the server throughout the day for info about patients and such.

Anyway, since the existing HDDs were dynamic, Acronis' software didn't work. That would've been a great option though I think since the 15-day trial is fully functional, and how many times does one need to clone their drives? (OK, some of you sound like this is a regular / almost-daily thing)

Like I said, the blue/grey screen of Ghost 2003 is chugging along nicely now. It started with almost 1-hour estimated "time remaining" and is down to 45-minutes now.

I hope it reboots immediately because I'm about at the outer extent of my technical expertise. (I was trained as a Comp Sci major, but I'm not a daily geek like many of my friends and seemingly the folks here.)

My next project (if this works) will be to get a second VelociRaptor 300GB and enable the MIRROR feature in Server 2003.

I tried that before the the original 75GB and new 300GB but it looked like Windows kept hanging when the mirroring began. Not sure what the issue there was, but we'll try again with a (hopefully) new 300GB system HDD.

Thanks for the good info!

 

[wahnula]

skjmpark

Welcome to the forum, glad you found this info helpful. Just in case you did not notice, this forum is targeted at Small Business Server 2003, for full-blown Server 2003 advice it's best to turn to forum931. Again welcome to the board!

Tony

Users helping Users...