Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

Hard Drive Change

Tags:
  • Servers
  • Hard Drives
  • Windows
Last response: in Windows 2000/NT
Share
June 2, 2011 2:43:51 PM

I am new to this forum so I am hoping someone has had the same experience. I have a small business server running Windows 2000 server. The drives are working fine but space is running out. Other than that, the server is functioning very well and meets our needs. Currently I have a Promise TX200 RAID with "1" configuration to mirror the two IDE 120GB drives.

So I am thinking that if start the server and take one of the drives out I will get an error message "failed drive" and it will ask me to replace the drive. So if I put in the new drive, the computer will format and mirror the drive. Once this is completed I would reboot to see that all is well and then pull out the remaining "old" drive and the computer would once again indicate that there is a "failed drive" and ask for a new drive. Same procedure as before the computer would rebuild the new drive.

Now once this is done I would use Acronis to change the drive partition sizing. Will this work? Do I have to do anything with the RAID? Thanks for any help.

More about : hard drive change

June 3, 2011 12:55:01 AM

Personally, I do not like to play with partitions on raided drives, so I would schedule enough down time to directly mirror the current drive to the new drives.
m
0
l
June 3, 2011 2:59:21 PM

Your procedure certainly should work; after all, that's what RAID was designed for. But bear in mind that there is a small but finite chance that something could go wrong. For examlpe, should the disk fail between pulling the first one and rebuilding the array then you are scuppered.

As always, ensure that you have a full backup of any important data, and schedule as much time as possible for the operation to allow for problems. Personally, I always used to practice this sort of thing on a spare server before doing it for real but I appreciate that you may not have that luxury. You could always install a copy of server and the necessary data on a normal desktop before starting the operation, just to tide you over should something go wrong; it won't perform as well as a proper server but it could just save your bacon.

Also be aware that most desktop partition management utilites will not work on a server (strictly speaking any computer with server software installed) - they sell special expensive versions for that purpose. In the end it might be easier to just replicate your setup onto a desktop, use that whilst upgrading the server, and start from scratch with your server.
m
0
l
!