Best way to replace mirrored disks that contain the OS

[Guest Jan]

We have a Dell PowerEdge server and the OS mirrored volume needs to be

upgraded to larger disks. Is there a better way to do this other than

taking a backup, replacing the disks, re-installing the OS and then

restoring from my backup? I'd like to avoid the server being down that long.

 

I'm sure there must be some good products that can make this easier.

Does anyone have one they swear by?

 

Thanks

[Guest Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Re: Best way to replace mirrored disks that contain the OS

 

 

"Jan" <anyone@anywhere.com> wrote in message

news:uHu0cloaIHA.2000@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

> We have a Dell PowerEdge server and the OS mirrored volume needs to be

> upgraded to larger disks. Is there a better way to do this other than

> taking a backup, replacing the disks, re-installing the OS and then

> restoring from my backup? I'd like to avoid the server being down that

> long.

>

> I'm sure there must be some good products that can make this easier. Does

> anyone have one they swear by?

>

> Thanks

 

You could do this:

1. Break the mirror and disconnect the mirror disk.

2. Connect the new disk as a slave disk.

3. Partition & format the new disk.

4. Delete the value for the new system drive (e.g. \DosDevices\H:)

from here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

Do NOT reboot the machine into Windows after this!

5. Boot the machine with a Bart PE boot CD.

6. Use robocopy.exe to copy the old system partition to

the new disk.

7. Disconnect the old system disk.

8. Make the new system disk the master.

9. Boot into Windows.

10. Rebuild the mirror.

 

This method is safe because you're not changing the boot

partition of the old disk. Creating a Bart PE boot CD takes

a bit of time. However, it does not affect your server down-time.

[Guest Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Re: Best way to replace mirrored disks that contain the OS

 

 

"Jan" <anyone@anywhere.com> wrote in message

news:uHu0cloaIHA.2000@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...

> We have a Dell PowerEdge server and the OS mirrored volume needs to be

> upgraded to larger disks. Is there a better way to do this other than

> taking a backup, replacing the disks, re-installing the OS and then

> restoring from my backup? I'd like to avoid the server being down that

> long.

>

> I'm sure there must be some good products that can make this easier. Does

> anyone have one they swear by?

>

> Thanks

 

P.S. My method is not necessarily the "best way" (if there

is such a way) - it is one way to do the job.