johnalphaone
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Resize SBS 2003 System Partition
Running SBS 2003. Have a disk problem, data partition has NTFS corruption, system partition is ok. Whilst I'm sorting this out I want to increase the size of the system partition.
On another machine I use Ghost to backup the system partition, then to restore it to a larger partition on a fresh drive. I then re-install the drive in the server and want to use Recovery Console to do a FIXMBR etc. I boot using the SBS installation CD, but Windows Setup doesn't seem to recognise the existing version of SBS and proceeds to go straight into a fresh install.
Any ideas, please?
On another machine I use Ghost to backup the system partition, then to restore it to a larger partition on a fresh drive. I then re-install the drive in the server and want to use Recovery Console to do a FIXMBR etc. I boot using the SBS installation CD, but Windows Setup doesn't seem to recognise the existing version of SBS and proceeds to go straight into a fresh install.
Any ideas, please?
Lee W, MVP
How large is the system partition?
ASKER
Original is 12Mb, new one will be 30Mb.
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ASKER
>> First, you mean GB?
Yes, sorry, long day.
>> You said the system partition is ok - so you can boot right?
Yes
>> Did you already use Ghost on the system?
No, I only have Ghost on a separate XP machine.
>> How did you determine the data partition was corrupt? Chkdsk? What is its condition right now?
Chkdsk gives up on it. It's still corrupt. I do have a backup.
>> Thus, I do NOT advise trying to do what you want to do in expanding the C: drive, especially when it's already 12 GB.
I'm not directly expanding the drive. The Ghost restore is being done to a fresh drive.
>> (Dell server, right?)
Right
>> If you haven't already, you need to move files to other partitions.
Good advice.
However, I'm still curious to know why this doesn't work. The old drive had an small extra partition before C:. So I guess boot.ini is wrong. My guess is that that's what Windows Setup uses to find existing Windows installations.
Yes, sorry, long day.
>> You said the system partition is ok - so you can boot right?
Yes
>> Did you already use Ghost on the system?
No, I only have Ghost on a separate XP machine.
>> How did you determine the data partition was corrupt? Chkdsk? What is its condition right now?
Chkdsk gives up on it. It's still corrupt. I do have a backup.
>> Thus, I do NOT advise trying to do what you want to do in expanding the C: drive, especially when it's already 12 GB.
I'm not directly expanding the drive. The Ghost restore is being done to a fresh drive.
>> (Dell server, right?)
Right
>> If you haven't already, you need to move files to other partitions.
Good advice.
However, I'm still curious to know why this doesn't work. The old drive had an small extra partition before C:. So I guess boot.ini is wrong. My guess is that that's what Windows Setup uses to find existing Windows installations.
The boot.ini points to a partition and that small extra partition is what's causing the problem, almost certainly.
How does Chkdsk give up? Do you have RAID on this server? Hardware or Software RAID? If you can, backup (again, to different backup media) whatever you can on the bad partition - then delete it. Then recreate it and restore.
How does Chkdsk give up? Do you have RAID on this server? Hardware or Software RAID? If you can, backup (again, to different backup media) whatever you can on the bad partition - then delete it. Then recreate it and restore.
ASKER
Ok, the answer to the original question is as follows. The SBS 2003 installation CD supplied by Dell appears to be designed to work only with their Server Assistant bootable CD. It skips all the usual Windows Setup stuff about choosing a partition etc. When I retried with a standard Microsoft installation CD the Recovery Console was available.
Now I can boot the server with the fresh drive but the system partition has retained drive letter M: from the XP system. SBS 2003 is not surprisingly quite unhappy about that. I think it's probably time to cut my losses and go with leew's excellent advice on file placement. Just before I do that, though, does anyone have a workaround for the drive letter problem?
Now I can boot the server with the fresh drive but the system partition has retained drive letter M: from the XP system. SBS 2003 is not surprisingly quite unhappy about that. I think it's probably time to cut my losses and go with leew's excellent advice on file placement. Just before I do that, though, does anyone have a workaround for the drive letter problem?
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ASKER
Jeff, yes agreed.
I've reinstalled SBS2003 from scratch using the Dell Server Assistant CD and specifying a larger system partition. I then restored the system partition from the Retropspect backup. I'll now move on to adopt leew's advice on the file placements.
Thanks for you help.
I've reinstalled SBS2003 from scratch using the Dell Server Assistant CD and specifying a larger system partition. I then restored the system partition from the Retropspect backup. I'll now move on to adopt leew's advice on the file placements.
Thanks for you help.
Just FYI, you could have chosen those file placements during the initial install on the Data Folders screen: http://www.sbs-rocks.com/sbs2k3/images/data.jpg
If you are going to move them after you should follow the guidelines in http://sbsurl.com/movedata
Jeff
TechSoEasy
If you are going to move them after you should follow the guidelines in http://sbsurl.com/movedata
Jeff
TechSoEasy
ASKER
>>you could have chosen those file placements during the initial install on the Data Folders screen
The original OS was Dell pre-installed. My installation was just to get a running system from which I could restore from the backup.
>> If you are going to move them after you should follow the guidelines ...
Thanks, that should be helpful.
The original OS was Dell pre-installed. My installation was just to get a running system from which I could restore from the backup.
>> If you are going to move them after you should follow the guidelines ...
Thanks, that should be helpful.
Ah... that is a crummy thing about the OEM installs: http://msmvps.com/blogs/bradley/archive/2004/09/26/14417.aspx
Jeff
TechSoEasy
Jeff
TechSoEasy