On 12/20/22 10:12 PM, Chris via cctalk wrote:
This beast was given to me by a neighbor. Dual socket 604. Windows
2003 in some RAID configuration.
It might help us to know what model the Dell server is.
I understand (or used to understand) RAID levels somewhat. But iinm he
tells me the OS is "split" over 6 scsi drives.
That could mean many different things.
Aside: Is "iinm" short of "if I'm not mistaken"?
Not getting this, but I don't need all the redundancy/striping. I
understand (or used to understand) RAID levels somewhat. But iinm he
tells me the OS is "split" over 6 scsi drives. Not getting this, but
I don't need all the redundancy/striping. I want it all on 1 drive.
It's technically possible, though unlikely, that the RAID is of really
small drives, and you may need the aggregate space of multiple drives to
do the install.
Though I'd be surprised if they are smaller than 4.3 GB drives, and
Windows 2003 itself will easily fit in that space.
What to use to image what comstitutes 1 volume I guess.
It really depends what the RAID technology is.
PowerEdge servers used a combination of PowerEdge RAID Controller
(a.k.a. PERC) cards (read: hardware) and / or Windows (read: software)
RAID technologies. -- At least from Dell. There are lots of other
more esoteric options too.
You / we really need to know what /type/ of RAID is used to be able to
move forward with any certainty.
Norton Ghost?
If it's a PERC and it presents itself to the BIOS as a SCSI card, then
chances are decent that you can get (Norton) Ghost to work on the drive.
Aside: There's every chance that Ghost will refuse to work on a server
OS and require you to use a different version. -- This was the case
with PowerQuest's PartitionMagic vs ServerMagic.
Further Aside: I'd expect that PQ-SM would at lease see the /logical/
/volume(s)/, even if it was software RAID. I don't think there was much
change between NT's software RAID and Windows 2000 / 2003 counterparts.
This is assuming that you do the cloning from outside of Windows, which
is usually a safe bet.
I have routinely used Acronis TrueImage from inside of Windows to backup
systems. I believe that such a backup can be used to restore to bare metal.
Acronis even has options for -- what I think they call -- disaster
recovery that will allow the backup and / or restore process to inject
generic drivers into the recovered system so that you can restore to
dissimilar hardware.
All of this ignores what i consider to be the elephant in the room. --
What is on the server that you care about retaining? Or why don't you
just blow it away and do a fresh install of Windows on the drive
configuration that you want?
I have an extra scsi drive, I can always restore the image to the 1
drive (yes?), before or without alterimg the currently embedded stack.
Maybe. Probably. Capacity /may/ be an issue. Especially if there's
software other than /just/ Windows Server 2003 that you want to retain;
e.g. application data.
This thing is heavy. I secured a copy of the Corel Linux Starter Kit
and want to load it into the Poweredge. For chips and pringles. I
have other pre uefi boxes around but this is lying dormant. And 6
drives for my purposes is stupid. And heavy.
If you're going to install Corel Linux, do you even really care about
the Windows installation?
There is actually a chance that installing Linux on the spare drive may
be one of the better paths moving forward. I say this because it should
be possible to make Linux see just about any type of RAID on the system.
Chances are extremely good that Linux will see the PERC -- if that's
what it is -- as well as Microsoft Dynamic Volume -- if it's software
RAID inside of Windows.
At least I think Linux's Dynamic Volume support includes software RAID.
You probably have many more tools available in Linux to image the
logical volume(s), whether they be hardware and / or software.
PartImage comes to mind.
Once you have the image, you can then do away with the RAID as it exists
and do whatever you want with the rest of the drives.
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die
