Tom,
You post is a great one b/c it illustrates a perfect and inevitable problem we will all face several times in our carreers....we will eventually outgrow our servers. You are at that point, and there is no way around the fact that you need to harware-upgrade or replace your server. The other user replies echo this fact.
I share your problem. I have a Dell PowerEdge 2900 with four drives, 2 pairs of 2 drives in a RAID 10 config. Each pair is 160 GB so I have 320GB total. While my problem is not yet one of space, my problem is the OS which I want to upgrade.
But the core issue I have is the same as yours. I need to do a hardware upgrade, and have purchased 8 x 750 GB drives for my server which will boost my capacity significantly. Then I will upgrade to a new OS (SBS 2008) and then migrate my current settings into the new OS (SBS 2003 upgraded to SBS 2008) using another large capacity desktop to perform a "swing migration."
As for the hard drives, I believe the drives have a carrier for inserting into the server from the front for hot swap capability. I will double check, but I know that makes them significantly more expensive.
Tom I had to SEAPARATELY buy the carrier trays for the hard drives, search Ebay for "[your system model] hard drive carrier trays." Buy them on ebay, and get your hard drives new from Tigerdirect.com or Newegg.com. Hard drives are dirt cheap if you are satisfied with 7200 RPM SATA with sizes < 1-TB. The carrier trays for the Dell Poweredge are even less expensive. They range on Ebay from $10-25 each, and many sellers have brand new ones. I got mine new for $15 each, including shipping fees and the hard drive mounting screws.
My suggestion: you would be well served to hire an IT expert to help your expansion project. I am doing so for mine. While I originally setup my server and installed the RAID configuation and SBS, this project is too complex and frankly too scary for me to do on my own. I simply cannot afford to have my server down for days or weeks while I monkey around with it. So I swallowed my pride and had to hire an expert to help me. This is very hard for me to do b/c as a physician, I'm trained to try and figure things out on my own. Asking for help is not easy for me because I know that (with enough time) I could do this on my own.....but I don't have 1 whole week off to do this project and run a busy practice. So had to hire help.
and since this machine is doing several other important things I think that would be a considerable risk to take. The suggestions seem pretty good, but I am just too worried about something going wrong when messing with RAID or imaging and not having a quick and easy fall back plan. Reinstalling the OS and all the other server apps is out of the question.
My project is causing me massive amounts of anxiety. It should b/c the server is my business. Without it, I am bankrupt. So I'm not taking any chances on this. The point is your migration is not simple and is not easy. I'm not saying you can't do it on your own, but (like me) I am saying that you are justified in your anxiety about this upgrade. Unless you are 100% certain about the solution you read about on E-E, hire help for this project.
