OK so heres my problem I have a Windows 2003 Server with 20 users/clients on it and the drive is only 20Gigs now I bought a 250GB drive and want to install it but I also want to keep the data exactly as it is on the smaller drive so the users will not have to be added again and/or loose any of their backed up data. Is there a way for me to "back up" all the data on the original smaller drive and keep my files exactly the way they are? I tried using the back up it has but it says its limited to only 4GB??? I need to back up all 15Gigs or so. Please let me know what the best way to back this up will be or if there is a better program to do this with. I have heard like Norton Ghost will do this. Also I have an external drive that is USB and can hold 400GB can i use this to back it up then move it to the new drive once installed? Any help would be appreciated.
2006-12-04 16:13:28 · 6 answers · asked by MAKAVELI 2 in Computers & Internet ➔ Software
I'm a little confused as to what it is you actually want to do ... do you want to just "back-up" the data or do you want to have the whole of your smaller drive copied to the new drive and use that ...
Firstly ... if you just want to back-up yes you can use your external hard-drive or just install the bigger new drive and transfer to that
If you want to have everything including your Server 2003 Operating System on the new drive then you need something like Norton Ghost to copy an image of your smaller drive across to the new one
Good Luck :)
2006-12-04 16:17:33 · answer #1 · answered by deadkelly_1 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
This what happens when you don't plan anything before hand. look before you leap.
Ok connect the new hdd as the slave and boot the computer, create an image of the old hdd and save it on any partition other than 1st on the new hdd.
After that just disconnect your old hdd and boot the new hdd as the master. Use ghost to write the image on the primary partition of this disk. Reboot and you are runnig win2k3 again from the new hdd.
Delete the image if you want to... and connect the other hdd as slave and keep it as it is for some time until when you are sure all the data has been replicated.
Then if you want you can use the other hdd for just paging file... Its a significant performance increase for the system.
The above is when you are using a standard PC as the server not special server hardware with hot swap hdd's.
Good Luck!
P.S. be careful and read every dialog box that appears throughout the process. All "yes and ok" don't make it right.
2006-12-04 17:51:08 · answer #2 · answered by Monk Mst 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
20 GB for a server is fine, but considering the size of the OS and installation of Service Packs and patches, that is all that I'd keep on the host box. I'd then replicate the file structure on one of your larger drives so as user file sizes increase, your not hampering the performance of your server. Ghost would be a good utility to replicate the file structure on another drive while Veritas Back Up Exec 10 or Dantz Retrospect are better options for file back up. Ghost would also be a good tool for creating an image of your server so in the event of failure you're not having to reinstall from scratch.
2006-12-04 16:27:30 · answer #3 · answered by cptdrinian 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I can highly recommend you to use Acronis True Image Server for Windows. This is very reliable software with a bunch of features. You can schedule an incremental backup of your server in order to image all updates. Also you can just clone your small drive on a big one. And of course you can backup your important data either to the external drive or to the new hdd. So you don't need to backup on the external drive first and then move image archives to the new drive you can backup them directly to the internal hdd. If you want to know more about this software you can visit their site:
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATISWin/
2006-12-04 20:33:17 · answer #4 · answered by S&H 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I can also recommend you True Image Server for Windows. True Image will solve all your backup and cloning problems. It can create an exact server disk image, including the operating system, applications, and configurations. After any disaster or system crash True Image can perform a full system restore, a bare-metal restore or just a restore of individual files and folders in minutes. Complete system restoration can be performed to an existing system, to a new system with different hardware or to a virtual machine. True Image has a management console for remote operations, scheduler and many more features. It can clone and upgrade disk drives and can store your data anywhere you want.
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/products/ATISWin/
2006-12-06 03:25:26 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Use Norton Ghost !!!!
2006-12-04 16:15:28 · answer #6 · answered by Shaj 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋