Transfer information from a cabled drive to a hotswap

Are you asking how to transfer the data from one set of drives to the other?

If so we will need information about how the hot swap drives are setup. Typically they would be in some sort of RAID configuration. Probably a RAID 1 configuration, disk mirroring, and this will wiegh heavily on how you must proceed from here.

Please answer back!

ASKER

oh sorry I spelled my sentence wrong, yes how do I tranfer the info from one drive to the others . the cabled drive will not fit into the hotswap cage . I do not have a raid set up and i do not know how to do mirroring with my windows server 2003 os but thats is my intention, to mirror the 2 new drives that i will install . but i need the info on the old drive that was cable connected . thanks

ASKER

Do you have a tape drive in the system? Are you trying to create an exact copy of the old drive onto the new drives?

ASKER

yes thats the whole point

ASKER

no tape drive, just the one 36g drive

lstonge

Use any disk duplicating utility like Paragon drive manager, Symantec ghost, Powerquest drive image, etc.

If you don't want to buy a software, you can do a win2k mirror directly but you will have to convert your actual hard disk to a win2k dynamic disk. Simply boot on your existing hard disk, while your new hotswap is correctly installed in the system. Go in computer management, disk management, you should see your 2 physical hard disks, the actual one with your partition and the new hotswap one should be empty. Right click on disk0 or disk1 square and select upgrade as a dynamic disk. Then check both disk0 and disk1 checkboxes, click ok and click upgrade.

It will reboot and convert automatically (it's not a long operation). I never lost any data doing this but as always, you must have a BACKUP if anything goes wrong.

When convert is over, it will boot in windows as usual. Then go back to computer management, disk management, you should now see disk0 and disk1 as dynamic disks. Disk1 should still be empty since it's your new drive. Right click on disk0's first partition and select add mirror. Select disk1 as target, it will create the partition automatically and rebuild. Do this for all the partitions you have on disk0.

When rebuilds are completed, you must right click on disk1 first partition and select "make active". Now turn off the system and remove the old drive. If everything is setup correctly, it should boot fine.

Luc

I would take the easy route and just use Symantec Ghost to copy your old drive to one of the new drives. Then you should be able to setup RAID 1 (mirroring) with out much trouble at all. I have performed this operation many a times with out a single failure.

Symantec Ghost typically works a lot better then Paragon drive manager or Powerquest drive image.

lstonge

I must disagree, Ghost is average working, often won't work with some special controllers. But when it works it's reliable and fast. When it doesn't work, I use Paragon drive manager. It's quite slow but reliable and works almost always when Ghost freezes or don't complete copy due to bad sectors or else. (based on hundreds of duplications).

Luc

if you are installing 2 NEW drive(hot swap), leave your cabled drive in place, build and configure your array and copy the antire drive from the wired HDD to the new Raid drive.

when it is done, unplug the wired drive and use it as a book older...lol

The only time that I have not been able to complete a ghost with symantec is when the hard drive is too defective to even access the data. I have used the new version, 2004, and it has supported every service controller that i have put it on. That adds up to be close to a 1000 different servers, varying 1 to 7 years old, with many different controllers and with out a single incompatibility. So i have to strongly disagree with your statement about ghost not being compatible with some controllers. Maybe with a system that is 10 years old it might not be compatible, but if you are running that old of a system you need to evaluate your position in the computer world.

I guess it comes down to how much you actually use a product and in what types of situations you use this product.
For SERVERGMS ghost is going to be the quickest and most reliable way to get the operation complete.

lstonge

NWCS, I will not begin to play this game. Obviously, you decided that you love Ghost and the rest is scrap. Are you paid by Symantec? Did I attack you personally? I see by your comment that you're not very objective. If you are so experienced you should know that no soft is an universal solution. Ghost 2004 is better but I still ran into a problem not later than last week on a 1 year old dual Xeon with SATA raid and Drive manager worked well. It happens sometimes, it's a fact, that's all. since it's quite silly, I won't comment more on this.

Anyway, I'm here to help servergms and other people, not to please people that already "know" everything :-)

Luc

All i was trying to do was give SERVERGMS the quickest and easiest way to complete the operation. Which is what i stated at the end of my last post. Everyone is entitiled to thier own opinions, i fully agree that other software must be used in certain situations. But by far Symantec Ghost is the most reliable and quickest way to get a job done.

Symantec Provides Training for thier larger accounts which can give you valuable insights into features about ghost that can resolve almost any issue that comes up while ghosting drives.

lstonge, check it out, it might make things a little quicker and easier for you in the future.

*there is nothing like doing a job the old fashioned way, that i cannot disagree with. But when the boss man is breathing down your neck to make his million dollar mansion bigger, you have to find the easiest and quickest way to solve problems effectively*

P.S. I am not a spokesman for Symantec, just a highly trained individual who knows what tools are needed to complete a job quickly.

Sorry lstonge if you felt like i was attacking you, I am only here to solve ServerGMS problems in the fastest way possible

ASKER

just a second . I have one cabled drive that is already installed , which I must remove to add the new hard drive cage with the new drives . so would I somehow keep the already installed hard conected ? or remove it, put the new cage and hds in then reconnect the old one (if possible) to the cable , as it will not connect via the new cage , then mirror the old to one new then rempve the old then mirror the new to the other new ? is this possoble ?

i'm a bit confused by your step description but it is posible:

1- mirror the odl drive to a new one.
2- build your raid 1 array and choose to copy existing drive (will mirror disc 1 to disc 2).

for the above, if your array contain the operating system, it might not work!!!

ASKER

That is my question, the old drive will NOt fit into the new hard drive cages and the new drives will NOT work unless the new cages are installed . So how do i transfer the data from the old to the new when the old doesn't fit ? and i must remove the old to install the new ???

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ASKER

I need to know how to mirror in windows server 2003 cuz i dont have a raid card . thanks

so, your raid is onboard or you do not hare a raid controler?