Upgrade from 2000 to 2003

[Albion]

My current file server is a Windows 2000 Dell PowerEdge 2600 with a 200gig RAID5 residing in a 2003 Domain. It has two partitions (5gig) and (195gig). My ultimate goal is to get it up to 2003 with two partitions (40gig) and (160gig). Would it be better to:

A) Back up the entire system, repartition, reinstall 2000, restore the backup, then upgrade to 2003, or...

B) Backup the entire system, repartition, install 2003, restore data from backup, then reset the 400 or so shares on the drive, printer configs, backup configs, SQL server configs, etc...

I guess the main question is whether or not it's a good idea to upgrade 2000 to 2003 or install a new copy of 2003 even though it's going to take a long ass time to do it.

Thanks

-Al

 

[mrdenny]

I would do the full install and then deal with the shares and configs etc. The full install will be cleaner, smoother and won't have pits and pieces of 2000 on the drive.

Denny

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

 

[bowfonz]

Have you considered using Symantec VolumeManager to adjust your partitions? Then you could just upgrade to 2003. It seems to me that blowing away the OS and reinstalling from scratch is lot of extra unneccessary work.

 

[Albion]

I have looked at VolumeManager, but just can't see shelling out $900 for a piece of software I am going to use once. By the time I'd need it again it will be 4 versions old and most likely not functional with the server software I will be using.

But I think mrdenny is right, I am going to format and reinstall. I am dreading having to reshare and repermission everything, but like he said, it's cleaner. And now that I am doing all my user directories from Active Directory and my Logon script it should be much easier.

Thanks guys for the responses.

-Al

 

[repel]

Hi, i'm kind of in the same boat, except i have windows2000 server runing sql2000 and i want to upgrade to window2003, was wonding how it would be best to do this?
thanks

 

[mrdenny]

I'd still recommend the format and reinstall. I just dislike upgrades. And there are some enterprise manager issues that pop up when you upgrade with SQL installed.

Denny

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

 

[ntinlin]

Try Acronis Drive Tools rather than Volume Manager. A lot cheaper.

Neill