sglee
asked on
Restoring SBS2011 OS from the USB backup drive
Hi,
I have a complete backup of SBS2011 (via Windows Server Backup) on an external USB drive and like to restore everything without having to install SBS2011 on a blank hard drive for testing.
The original server (SBS2011) has different hardware specs from the test server box:
RAID PC MoBo Partition
***** ******** ***********
Original box Yes Intel 1.8TB (200GB OS 1.2TB Data 400GB Data)
Test Box No Dell 2TB
Will this work?
Thanks.
I have a complete backup of SBS2011 (via Windows Server Backup) on an external USB drive and like to restore everything without having to install SBS2011 on a blank hard drive for testing.
The original server (SBS2011) has different hardware specs from the test server box:
RAID PC MoBo Partition
***** ******** ***********
Original box Yes Intel 1.8TB (200GB OS 1.2TB Data 400GB Data)
Test Box No Dell 2TB
Will this work?
Thanks.
David
If this is the MSFT retail packaging ... yes, it can be made to work. If, however it is an OEM windows distribution, then it won't
ASKER
If you are referring to OS DVD, it is MS VL version.
Acronis has some migrationand cloning sooftware onn their website you can tr
ASKER
I like to find out if Microsoft Windows Server backup will do the job first before looking for 3rd party solutions. Have you re-created SBS2011 on a different hardware directly from an External USB drive that was used as a backup device for Windows Server Backup?
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@donnk
I successfully restored the entire SBS2011 from the external USB backup drive.
All I had to do was to hook up my external USB HD to my test server (DELL T105), insert Windows 7 Recovery CD, and start the server. I made sure that I created one big partition on the raid volume in the test server and restored OS first. Then I shrunk OS partition, created a new data partition in CompMgmt and restored all the data.
Exchange was restored flawlessly too. I feel that Windows Server backup is a pretty good complete backup solution. I used to use Symantec Backup Exec for Small Business too, but the one good thing about it is that you can restore individual mail item(s) if necessary whereas on Windows Server Backup, you have to mount the whole mail database and restore user's entire mailbox which is a long & complicated process.
Anyway it was good to know that Windows backup is really all I need to deal with "Catastrophic hardware failure" on the current server.
Thanks for your help.
I successfully restored the entire SBS2011 from the external USB backup drive.
All I had to do was to hook up my external USB HD to my test server (DELL T105), insert Windows 7 Recovery CD, and start the server. I made sure that I created one big partition on the raid volume in the test server and restored OS first. Then I shrunk OS partition, created a new data partition in CompMgmt and restored all the data.
Exchange was restored flawlessly too. I feel that Windows Server backup is a pretty good complete backup solution. I used to use Symantec Backup Exec for Small Business too, but the one good thing about it is that you can restore individual mail item(s) if necessary whereas on Windows Server Backup, you have to mount the whole mail database and restore user's entire mailbox which is a long & complicated process.
Anyway it was good to know that Windows backup is really all I need to deal with "Catastrophic hardware failure" on the current server.
Thanks for your help.
glad your sorted. MS backup is really good as its block based so effectively each night is only incremental to speed it up but in reality is full!
ASKER
it is indeed!