I have 2 problems.
1. I want to be able to make a clone of my 2 harddrives runnning dynamic disks. I have tried with acronis/paragon, but they don´t even see the dynamic disks. How on earth do I make a copy. I have to disks ready and my thought was first to copy hardrive one to harddrive one and afterwards harddrive 2 to hardrive 2 - but this wont work with non of acronis or paragon
2. I need this backup because I want to create more space on the c: drive on the dynamic disks. Drive c: has 700MB left while e: has 120GB left. So I want some of the space from E: moved to C: I was told that paragon server edition could that. But when entering paragon I can only resize the small dell partition on the disk. When I click on the other partition like C: or E: the rezise button is grayed out and not an option.
Any one able to help?!?
BTW. In windows harddisk management I am able to break the mirror. What happend when I do this. Today they are running raid 1 today
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My plan is first to make a copy of both disks so they are running normally. Than I have the original as backup.
I break the mirror on the 2 new drives and on one of them I resize as it should be - and afterwards I make them dynamic again. But before making dynamic should I than delete the contens on one of the harddrive - the mirroring should be done automatically I suppose
If you've only converted them to dynamic to mirror them then you can break the mirror, revert to basic and clone one of them, then normal partition tools will work. If you break the mirror physically by pulling a disk out (after shutting down in the case of software RAID) you've automatically got a backup. Paragon will convert from dynamic to basic without data loss but I think you have to buy the server edition for this. You can even convert manually by editing the partition table as it was initially created as a basic disk during OS install.
Make sure you know how to boot the mirror in case it goes tits-up, you'll probably need a SFT boot floppy.
What is a sft floppy and how do I make one?
I have just been at the server. I have used HD clone and the 2nd disc take 5 minutes and the clone is taken. But the other disk Is there a lot of read errors (bad sectors) and it takes days before it will finish.
The wired thing is, that I thought the 2nd disc should be able to run alone. But when starting the dell server up it asks for drive number 1. It is somehow like the boot partition is only placed on disc one which I can clone. I have to get this working the weekend :(
Isn´t there a way to find a way that this is running ?
Here is a view over the discs
disk manager
On second thoughts you probably won't get it to boot anyway, http://support.microsoft.c
rossoneris, I have just checked with my copy of Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Server Edition and it did detect the similar configuration. What product\version did you try from Paragon?
I did upgrade my HDDs in server with Drive Backup and I did it in the following way:
Run Drive Backup and took backup image of volumes on HDD0 which is a part of dynamic mirror.
Then, connected new HDD of bigger size, Windows suggested me to convert it to dynamic - I selected - NO.
Then run Drive Backup 9.0 again and restored to new HDD with autoresize that resized both volumes adequately to all available space on my 500GB drive.
Then, restarted server from this new drive. Checked if all is working ok. Disconnected old drives, connected second 500GB drive. Converted both to dynamic and rebuilt the mirror.
This is one solution.
Additionally a question - did you contact Paragon Support member?? What was their answer?
I personally recommend you the following:
Download Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 Server Edition: www.partition-manager.com
Then, install it and take backup of C: and D: volumes on HDD.
Then right click on C: and select Brake Mirror. The same for E: volume.
Then run Partition Manager and right click on HDD0 in its interface - select Convert to Basic. Or find this option in Hard Drive menu in same program.
This will restart your server twice. First for conversion second for new HDD initialization.
Then, right click on E: and select Move\Resize. An operational window will open. Catch the left border of partition with mouse left click and drag it to right so take some free space for C: drive. Apply changes and wait till it completes. For better speed make sure that nothing is locking E: drive for this time.
Then, right click on C: - move\resize - catch its right border and drag to right - apply changes. Few seconds and it is done.
Go to Windows Disk Management and convert the drive back to dynamic.
Delete volumes on HDD1 and rebuild mirror. As simple as possible.
Drive backup I have not tried - but i´ll give it a try.
When taking backup I suppose I must make an image of both HDD0 and HDD1, with drive backup. The problem is that there is many read errors and HDDclone would take 66 hours(estimated). Is there anything in drive backup that can skip these problems somehow ?
If I can make the copy of HDD0 to the new 500GB harddisk - do I not need to make a copy of the HDD1 harddisk ?
Today when the dell server start it must have 2 harddrives connected. As soon I unplug one of these it ask for the device (hdd0 or hdd1).
Running dynamic disc means, that when a file is written to harddrive 0 it is also written to harddrive 1 - and if someone goes wrong with the copy of harddrive 0 the harddrive 1 will also be "infected".
Yes, I know this dynamic imaging structure. This is called dynamic mirror. Take backup of the HDD0 (backup image) and save it either on external or internal HDD. You can do it with trial version of Drive Backup 9.0 Server Edition. Then connect the 500GB HDD and restore from backup to this drive. Boot the server from this drive and remove your mirror.
I thought your primary goal was to give to C: more space. I've been in contact with support of Paragon and showed them your configuration and they admitted that Partition Manager could do the reallocation of free space easily. So you can take space from E: and allocate it to C:
Why do you need the copy then?
No I think we talk about different things or misunderstand eachother :)
I am totally clear about that I take a backup of HDD 0 to a place and afterwards place it on the 500GB harddisk. But the HDD1 - should I not also take a backup of this device and use the same procedure as with hdd0.
I am clear about, that when I break the mirror I can move space from e: to C: - but as long they are running dynamic I am only able to change the size of the very small partition in the start - and that is what I suppose paragon also said
Ok, now it is clear. You do not need to backup HDD1 as it contains exactly same data and files that you have on HDD0. So just ignore HDD1.
As a test I have created similar configuration on my guinea pig machine and used my copy of Partition Manager 9.0 Server Edition to convert the drive from dynamic to basic, then resize partitions on it and after that converted the drive back to dynamic with Windows Disk Management. So you can do the same easily.
What you have to do is brake mirror for C: and E: then convert HDD0 to basic - resize - convert it back and rebuild mirror.
Hm, bad blocks must be treated first. Does your server drive has bad blocks on its surface? I know that Drive Backup says something like Internal error when bad block is found.
Look for your HDD vendor site and use their own utility to treat bad blocks.
As for server, you do not change anything if you simply try to take backup of your dynamic drive. Is there any error?
I just recollected that I used the software R-Studio product to take backup image of the drive with bad blocks and then restored it to new drive: http://www.r-studio.com/
Don't be mixed with Data Recovery name. It can create image of the system even if bad blocks are found. Then I used another demo of R-Drive Image to restore from this image.
What version of it you are using? I used R-Studio to create image of partition. Then another product from them - R-Drive Image restored it to healthy drive that has no bad sectors.
You do not need to run Recovery tool of it. Simply try to create image.
Erm, if it supports dynamic drive. At least they say they do support.
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by: IT_ITPosted on 2009-03-27 at 13:54:33ID: 24005405
Hi
Acronis and Paragon don't support dynamic disk. If you are running a Mirrored volume then you have a copy so both drives in the mirror should be identical. If you want to resize your C volume I would use Gparted
http://gparted.sourceforge
it may work for a dynamic disk but I would run a back up first (NT back up or what ever) on the system or break the mirror and only do it to one drive then if it works mirror the drives again just make sure you mirror the drive you changed to the old drive and not the other way around.