NT System Drive

[basspro]

Hello. Our company server (Dell, NT4 Server, sp6a) is almost out of space on the main drive. I have a new hot swapable drive sitting here ready to install. What do I have to do before I unplug the old drive?After I install the new drive how do I go about restoring all the system accounts, shares, trusts, and settings? Must I reinstall the os? Sorry for the easy question but I've never done this before and I can't lose the data. Thanks!

[Chico_Tech]

I'm not sure how long your system can be down but I reccomend using Norton's Ghost program to copy one disk to the other. It's easy and it's fast. It goes for about 65+ at buy.com. Typically it takes about 1 minute/100 megs of data. That's just a guess. So a full 10gig drive might take about an hour. It really depends on a couple of factors.

[kingtbone]

Does this machine only have 1 drive? You might be want to just stick the new drive in the case and have both working at the same time.

[shadow1]

Leave the original drive in. Just add the second. I only keep nt files on one. Apps run on a separate partitioned drive.

[basspro]

The system can be down for a day at most. We have three drives but the main one is full. The guy that set it up only made a 2 gig system partition. I installed all the apps on the other drives but the user profiles are taking up a bunch of space.

[Gabriel]

Ghost it
and after it Use PQMAGIC to Resize the Partition (C <IMG SRC="smilies/smile.gif" border="0">

[CampbellD]

Hi All,

There is a utility in the Windows Nt Resource Kit called - RoboCopy - it is effectively a copy command but it keeps all the attributes of the file when copying from one NTFS Partition to another.

I would suggest installing the new drive. copy the drive to the new one using robocopy - and then removing the old drive and if need be move the new drive to the same location as the boot.ini file is looking for, or simply change the boot.ini to correspond to the changed disk.

[Gabriel]

Originally posted by CampbellD:
<STRONG>Hi All,

There is a utility in the Windows Nt Resource Kit called - RoboCopy - it is effectively a copy command but it keeps all the attributes of the file when copying from one NTFS Partition to another.

I would suggest installing the new drive. copy the drive to the new one using robocopy - and then removing the old drive and if need be move the new drive to the same location as the boot.ini file is looking for, or simply change the boot.ini to correspond to the changed disk.</STRONG>

3 Things:
1. Could be a great Utility.
2. The Exact path in the Res. Kit.
3. Windows 2000 - Does this util work?

[rscos]

you may wanna consider adding another drive controller and duplexing your system or just runnign a mirror (will slow it down somewhat).

I'd agree with the other guys about ghost - but if you have the space and the time, make a new image periodicaly (always keep previous copies) or even just one image - of the 'perfect system'. This, combined with data backups should help you in the event of a disaster.