I am going to be upgrading Windows 2000 Advanced Server to Windows 2003 Standard server. From what I have read so far this needs to be a new installation. This is fine but I have a question.
Some quick background first. This is a file server has two SCSI hard drives both NTFS. The first drive is just the boot drive. The second hard drive contains all files. I will be installing 2003 on the first drive.
The question I have is. After the new install of 2003 and I plug the second hard drive with all of the files back in.... Will the OS automatically recognize the drive as is or am I going to have to format and set it all up in Disk Management, which will make me lose everything?
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by: donparPosted on 2003-09-24 at 21:50:40ID: 9425948
Hi,
From my own experience, you should not have any problems with your drive with the data-- it is NTFS, so there should not be a problem with Server 2003 recognizing the data drive. (I have upgraded Win2K systems to XP, which is an analogous situation, and the data drives were unaffected and worked fine.) You have wisely kept the "system" drive and the "data" drive separate, which is a good idea for situations just such as this.
You are correct in assuming that a clean install would be best, here. If you had a "plain vanilla" Win 2K server, an upgrade would probably work OK.
Good luck!
donpar