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ESXi 5.1 Image copy a hard disk

I have two ESXi 5.1 machines, Each machine has two hard disks. I believe one drive on each machine is going bad and I have new, larger replacements for them. One is the boot drive with a datastore and the other is an additional drive with a datastore.

Is there a disk copy utility that will simply copy the old drive to the new? Moving suff around (and reinstalling on the boot drive) could take a while.

Mike

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)

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ktaczala

When you say one is the boot drive, are you saying that it boots the VMware OS, and that's the one that's failing?

Mike Broderick

ASKER

That's a shame there's no disk copy utility.

I've read about installing ESXi onto a flash drive, but what does that buy me (i.e. what good things can I do or what bad things does it prevent)? Also:

Can the flash drive be duplicated and used in case of the original fails?
Will there be performance implications? I've seen slow flash drives.
Can the flash drive be removed once the startup is complete?
Is this the way most shops operate?
What brand/size do you recommend?

Thanks

SOLUTION