Replacing Mirrored Drive with larger one 3

[dataccount]

We have a three year old HP server with two 33GB Seagate mirrored drives. One of the drives has failed, and I am unable to locate another Seagate model ST336607LW SCSI (or similiar) drive to replace it. I ended up buying two larger, but cable compatible Seagate drives, with the intention of replacing both existing drives.

There are too many warnings about making sure both mirrored drives are identical for me to ignor the problem. What are the options if you must replace a mirrored drive with a larger one? On a workstation I would use a software product like Drive Copy or Norton Ghost, but these products do not work on Windows Server 2003.

Our daily data backups are done on a DVD using Genie Backup Manager, but the entire Windows 2003 operating system cannot be backed up. We do not have a tape backup device.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Jim

 

[SteveRoadWarrior]

You might be surprised what "older" server technologies will do with 2003 server. I've personally used Drive Image (Powerquest, now owned by Symantec, as is Ghost) 2002 to do exactly what you're trying. I choose a "do no harm" approach.

I'm assuming you have a software mirror? If so, it's harder.
Duplicate the working drive to a new drive
Note that your duplication software may hide the destination partition. Just unhide it.
Try to get this to work
you may have to move the new drive to the same SCSI location as the original
If this doesn't work, revert to your other plan and put the original drive back

The new method of doing this is to purchase Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery. It's integrated PQDI and Ghost. It's also 750$

 

[LWComputingMVP]

Who exactly is warning you? Because I've never been too concerned about drives matching - the key is making sure the replacement drive(s) are AT LEAST the same size as the original. After that, everything operates with the lowest common denominator. (I used mostly Dell hardware, but when we had a failure they didn't hesitate to provide a different brand and if the system was old, it wasn't unusual to get a larger drive).

Absolutely, make a backup first, but I would be very surprised if there was a problem.

 

[Cstorms]

We also had a mirrored drive go down, I just replaced with a larger drive which also was an off brand, they said "This is not only not supported but will probably not work".. it works fine, it just made the partition the same size as the smaller one which was ok in the first place.

 

[dataccount]

Lwcomputing, the warnings came from the Windows 2003 help system, and from the Microsoft web site. The actual warning is: "If you are replacing one of the disks in a mirrored system volume, be sure to use an identical disk to the one you are replacing. Otherwise, startup problems might occur if the disks use different geometries or if the system volumes are at different offsets on the disks."

That said, I like the approach used by you and Cstorms, except for the "Startup Problems" mentioned by Microsoft. Could the existing GOOD drive get corrupted somehow by doing this? If not, this would be my plan:

1. Replace the failed drive with the new, larger drive.
2. Make sure system boots OK, then format new drive at full capacity.
3. Reboot and create mirror on new drive.
4. Reboot and make sure mirror is "healthy". Break mirror on original drive.
5. Remove original drive and make sure system boots to new drive alone.
6. Enlarge partition, if necessary to full capacity of drive and reboot.
7. If everything is OK, shutdown and install second new drive. Create mirror and go have a beer.

Any risks here, other than the only complete backup we have is the original hard drive.

 

[Roadki11]

I would ghost the server to dvd, pull the 2 older smaller drives, put the new bigger drives in, setup your mirror, i am assuming its hardware raid, ghost the server back to the bigger array. You can on the fly increase the partion size with ghost.

just my 2 cents,

RoadKill

 

[dataccount]

Roadki11, I believe that although our RAID 1 system is supported by the hardware, the actual mirroring is a software function of Windows Server 2003. As mentioned earlier I have used Ghost (currently Version 10) for years to clone drives and backup the operating system. However, it will not even install on Windows Server 2003.

Apparently, I must use the Ghost Solution Suite 2.0 version to clone a Windows Server drive, but it seems you must purchase at least a 5-user license. We only have one server, plus this version appears to be much more than we need.

Anyone else have a suggestion before I jump in and replace the bad drive?

 

[Twizted]

Run GHOST from a boot disk.

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[Roadki11]

I use an old copy of ghost 2003 and it works fine on 2k3 servers. if it is a software mirrow, break it before you ghost it. then pull the old drives, put the new ones in and setup the hardware mirror, then restore the ghost and extend your partion. this really is a simple process, should take you more than an 2 hours, and if all goes wrong which could happen but has never happened to me you can always just pop the old drive back in and attack it again later with a different strategy. and you dont need to install ghost on the server, just make a boot disk and use that as Twizted stated.

RoadKi11

 

[dataccount]

Thanks, Twizted and Roadki11. I didn't think of creating a Ghost floppy boot disk from another computer. That should work - from Ghost's point of view the operating system doesn't matter, because one hard drive is just like any other hard drive.

Jim

 

[ANerdyGuy]

You don't even need a "ghost" boot disk. A network boot disk with TCP/IP support would be fine (provided it has your nic drivers). Put ghost.exe on a file server somewhere and after booting map a drive to that share and run the exe. Then you can create the image on said share.

Using ghost is the safest, cleanest, fastest, easiest method and as Roadki11 stated, you can do a partition size change on the fly.

After you pop in the new drives, boot the server and configure the hardware mirror.

Reboot the server using the network or ghost boot disk. When you run ghost and select the image to restore it gives you the oportunity to configure the destination partition size. Just make it the same size or bigger than the original and you'll be just fine.


ANerdyGuy