Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

Upgrade hard drive by mirroring a new one, then remove the old?

Tags:
  • Windows Server 2008
  • Exchange Server
  • Storage
  • Hard Drives
  • Business Computing
Last response: in Business Computing
Share
September 26, 2013 5:36:58 PM

My Exchange server (Exchange 2010 on Windows 2008 Server, not R2) is getting out of space. It has a single SATA drive with C: and D: on it. If I add a new bigger hard drive and mirror C: and D: to it, then shut it down and remove the old, can I boot up from the new drive?
Theoretically yes, I know, but as you know with Microsoft, something will go wrong. Anyone with any experience? Do I have to mess with the MSCONFIG? Will I get error messages like "Missing or corrupt winload.exe" when booting from the new drive?

More about : upgrade hard drive mirroring remove

a b G Storage
September 26, 2013 5:43:01 PM

As long as you clone the whole drive (like including the boot manager), it will work just fine.
m
0
l
a b G Storage
September 27, 2013 4:50:53 PM

I'm afraid you will come across many problems.

Creating a software RAID (ie. Windows disk management) doesn't work like a real RAID1. It mirrors the data but you won't be able to boot from the mirrored drive.

Creating a new hardware RAID1 volume requires wiping all data from the disks involved. You would need to create an image of the original drive, create the RAID1 volume, copy the image back to that volume. This is pointless because if you are going to the effort of imaging the drive you may as well just put the image straight onto the new drive.

If this were me I would opt for removing the drive, connect it up to another PC and use something like Acronis, Clonezilla, Macrium Reflect etc to clone it over the the larger drive. It means a few hours downtime while the drive is removed but it's much easier and more reliable. Depends how critical those few hours downtime are to you?
m
0
l
Related resources
a b G Storage
September 27, 2013 4:58:59 PM

I don't think he said anything about trying to use the disk management snap in to do it, but yes, he will need to use a real cloning program/utility.
m
0
l
a b G Storage
September 27, 2013 5:09:37 PM

Not specifically but what he described sounds precisely like a software RAID. How else would you mirror a drive without shutting down the system.
m
0
l
September 27, 2013 8:56:19 PM

I was talking about using the "add mirror" in Disk management in Windows 2008 Server. I doubt if I need any third party software because THEORETICALLY Windows can do it. That is why it is there for.. but with Microsoft stuff, something will go wrong (even I have the simplest hardware - one SATA drive, adding a 2nd one for mirroring). I just wanted to know if there are any successful stories. Thank you very much.
m
0
l
a b G Storage
September 27, 2013 9:48:42 PM

Casper is right though, that's not what that functionality is intended for at all and it most likely wouldn't work. You should use something like clonezilla (very easy), then it will work. Clonezilla is free by the way. I've done this with clonezilla and it worked perfectly.
m
0
l
September 27, 2013 10:15:13 PM

What is the functionality of the Windows mirroring redundancy then? Isn't it when one hard drive is dead (or removed intentionally), the mirrored one will still bring up the server?
clonezilla looks good by the way.
m
0
l
October 5, 2013 10:42:42 AM

Not as smooth as expected. MS is so buggy.
I have to deal with the "Missing or corrupt winload.exe (0xc000000e)" error. After that, it is all good.
m
0
l
!