imaging a terminal server for disk replacement

I have a PowerEdge 1950 3rd generation server that is running Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition R2 SP2 and is running Terminal Services. The drive configuration is two 150 GB SATA drive hooked to a PERC 6i integrated controller in a RAID 1 configuration. My department has purchased replacement SAS drives and housing so I can replace the SATA drives with SAS for faster disk performance. What is the best way to make an image of the current software and transfer it to a new SAS disks? I don’t have Ghost or Acronis and never had much luck with those programs when imaging servers with RAID controllers. Besides rebuilding from scratch what is another quicker method of transferring the current image to the new drives on the same server? Full NT backup and restore?

Thanks,

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Comments

Hyper-Me

use the waik and make a wim of it.

UnixGeek

Use Clonezilla:

Clonezilla-SysRescCD

Hyper-Me

UnixGeek wrote: »

Use Clonezilla:

Clonezilla-SysRescCD

A bunch of guys use that at work instead of using WDS like they are supposed too. I cant stand it.

HeroPsycho

coax31 wrote: »

I have a PowerEdge 1950 3rd generation server that is running Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition R2 SP2 and is running Terminal Services. The drive configuration is two 150 GB SATA drive hooked to a PERC 6i integrated controller in a RAID 1 configuration. My department has purchased replacement SAS drives and housing so I can replace the SATA drives with SAS for faster disk performance. What is the best way to make an image of the current software and transfer it to a new SAS disks? I don’t have Ghost or Acronis and never had much luck with those programs when imaging servers with RAID controllers. Besides rebuilding from scratch what is another quicker method of transferring the current image to the new drives on the same server? Full NT backup and restore?

Thanks,

Couple of ideas outside of the box a bit.

If you have no objections to using a virtualization product, you could P2V the server, and then install the server on the new hardware running a hypervisor. This would allow you to move it to new hardware down the road far more easily.

You could also use an imaging utility that is designed to work properly with RAID controllers, such as Backup Exec System Recovery. (Free trial should do the trick.)

Hyper-Me

WIM images are hardware agnostic. He can inject the drivers for the new RAID controller and drop the volume images back in as he needs.

A good advantage of file based imaging, as opposed to sector based.

Just a thought, of course backupexec would work well and I actually think a P2V would be the optimal choice.