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What is the best way to restore a SBS 2008 backup?

I had an issue with my dell raid array and will need to delete the current raid array and recreate. I would like to restore my sbs 2008 backup rather than start from scratch. as a result of my degraded raid 5, there has been some corrupted windows files. my question is, if I restore from a windows sbs backup (using the sbs console backup utility) will it restore the corrupted windows installation? would I be better off just doing a clean install?

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Cliff Galiher

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dnet2009

ASKER

I had a failed drive and dell sent me a replacement drive, which in dells words, corrupted parity data that is required to rebuild your raid array. which means I need to delete and create a new array. during this time there are several windows services that will no longer start. rather than address those issues one by one, I am thinking I should just do a clean install. There are only a handful of computers/users. I was just looking to save some time.

Cliff Galiher

My experience has been that a clean install takes as long as a migration, even with only a few users and computers. The bigger hurdles come in when it comes to resetting permissions on every file (which will be required with a clean install because ACLs have changed) and exporting and importing mailboxes from Exchange....also required because the database ACLs will be different on a clean install. With a migration you can simply do a robocopy to preserve ACLs and you can move mailboxes directly without the export/import process. In all, having done both several times over, a migration is a "cleaner" experience for users and is actually less error prone, and doesn't add significantly to time when considering data preservation.

-Cliff

dnet2009

ASKER

do you have a link to the migration steps?

Thanks for your help.

Cliff Galiher

My recommendation would be to buy a migration kit from www.sbsmigration.com ....it comes with literal step-by-step instructions, tools, and support. The small price you pay for a kit will pay for itself in time saved in forums or manually doing some things that the kit provides tools to do.

Alternatively, MS does have a documented method as well here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc664208(WS.10).aspx

It works well, is supported, but one support call to MS is the price of a swing kit. And forum support can be lost time as well, again where time is money, that can matter. Ultimately I've used both with success and understand that buying a kit for something that you can do for free can be a bitter pill, so the choice is ultimately yours.

-Cliff