Retire hard drive(s) on Windows NT 4.0 Server 1

[Bobot]

Hi all -

I have a customer with a pretty simple setup so I hope someone can give me some pointers to avoid a disaster on this one....

I have NT Server 4.0 SP6a running on hardware dated circa 1999. The system is a standalone server with (2) 8-Gig IDE drives, one drive being a mirror of the first. The customer wants to retire/replace these drives with (2) 40-Gig drives.


My thought process was:

1. Break the mirror
2. Use PowerQuest DriveCopy 4 to duplicate the 8 Gig primary drive image to the new 40 Gig primary drive
3. Bootup under the new 40 gig
4. Partition the extra space
5. Re-generate the mirror to the 40 Gig drives

Sounds simple, but I'm worried about things like the hardware abstraction layer and boot.ini and stuff complaining at step 3 above because I changed the hardware (drives). I'll bet dollars to donuts that if I did this I would get a blue screen of death on bootup.

Please help with any ideas or suggestions as to this process so I can make it as smooth as possible.

Thanks in advance as all your help has been great in the past!

- Bob

 

[jared71]

Does Drivecopy support resizing partitions? If so, I would recommend keeping the partition 8 Gb. If it doesn't, I would recommend using Symantec ghost, and making sure that you don't make the windows boot partition bigger than 8 GB on NT 4.0, you could run into problems.

 

[Bobot]

(bump)

Anyone? Hello?

Should I zero out the swap partition before doing this as well?

- Bob

 

[cartwfh]

Bobot,

I recently had to upgrade a couple of drives on a a server (only difference is I had a striped volume)

1) run a full backup (cant see a reason to zero out the swap partition)

2)break the mirror

3)image the drives (PROQUEST does support partition resizing- you will have to choose to image a partition instead of drive to drive imaging)

4)boot the system run scan disk and disk administrator to make sure nothing looks out of wack and to set up the new drive intended for the mirror

5)ONE OTHER THING.... IF YOU ARE UP GRADING FROM 8 GB DRIVES (I ASSUME ATA 33) TO 40 GB DRIVES(I ASSUME ATA66 OR 100) DONT FORGET THAT YOU MAY HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE IDE CABLES AS WELL. ATA33 DRIVES USED 40 PIN CABLE( AND THAT IS GOOD ENOUGH TO CARRY THOSE SLOWER SIGNALS) BUT THE NEWER ATA66 AND 100 DRIVES USE WHAT IS KNOWN AS 80 CABLE (80 PIN IDE CABLE) IT LOOKS THE SAME AS 40 PIN EXCEPT THE CONNECTORS ARE THREE DIFFERENT COLORS ON THE 80 CABLE. YOU MUST MAKE SURE YOU ARE USING THIS NEW CABLE OR YOU WILL HAVE ALL KINDS OF PROBLEMS DOWN THE ROAD.

Fred

 

[Bobot]

Thanks for the info Fred.

I do have an 80-pin IDE cable which I'll use to be safe, and the new 40 Gig drives are the 7200 RPM ATA 100 spec.

I think the server hardware is around 1999, so probably Intel Pentium 200MMX era. In this case, I would think it really wouldn't matter much for the cable since the motherboard probably doesn't support ATA 100 anyway...

I appreciate your notes and will do as you say. I'm really hoping I can do this without much trouble.

Thanks a lot and happy holidays!

- Bob

 

[cartwfh]

Hope the upgrades went well for you....

 

[chukws]

Hi Bobot help me out. Is it possible to install Win NT 4.0 on 40GB. I have try to install Win NT 4.0 on my compuer with 40Gb and intel Celeron CPU 1200MHz and 512MB of RAM, but Wins NT, does not see the whole disk, even when I partition it using partition Magic and make the primary partition active. Iwant to install Win NT on 8-10GB and create an extended partition of say 28GB to install all oracle component and dual boot with XP on the remaining space. But When I do I receive error the the system can format the partition because it is too large(8GBor 10) and the logical drive I can't see even if I go ahead and install in on say 4GB and go to disk administrator to see if I can see the remaining unpartition space, I see only 4GB. So how can I solve this problem. Because I want to install oracle on the NT environment

Please help

 

[Bobot]

Hi chuckws -

Well I have (2) separate networks I manage now running NT 4.0 server on 30 and 40 Gig Western Digital drives, even with software mirroring, so it does work. The only problem I had was that I had to upgrade the motherboard because the old motherboard bios wouldn't recognize the 40 gig drive.

After that, everything went smooth.

I personally would install Windows NT 4.0 server on a 4 Gig or 8 Gig max partition, and then get any needed drivers in place and then install Service Pack 6a on the machine. Then try to partition the remaining empty 20-30 Gig as an extended partition, and of course use NTFS as the file system for formatting.

I don't do "dual-boot" on anything, so sorry I can't help there, but as long as you are on NT and XP then NTFS should be OK.

I know it works, so I'm just wondering about your service pack level, because your motherboard bios should be new enough to support the 40 gig drive.

Hope this helps a little.

- Bob

 

[chukws]

Thank you Bobot. But will the NT see the extended partition if after that i go in with partition Magic and creat the partitions, because during installation it will see the 40GB, but, but I will see only 4GB as unpartitioned with disk adminstrator. I will try this out. thanks. I will tell you about the out come.

 

[Bobot]

Hmmm - I'm not sure. Why do you have to use Partition Magic?

 

[chukws]

Do mean that I should allow Windows to do the partitioning? or how do you mean that I do it? Please explain a bit.