Home Forums Help with replacing Server Hard Dirve

Hi,
I could use some advice about what cloning software to use to to swap out small capacity old server HD for new large capacity one.

What is the safest one to use [I only have room for 1 HD on my old server running Windows Standard 2008]?

What is the least expensive clone software that you would use [Acronis software comes free with the new 2T HD]?

I sure do not want to mess up doing this-- I no longer have my original server software disks [I sold the old office and am now in a new office-things get lost, fall into a black hole, are spirited away by magical creatures in the night, simply return to their original parallel universe, etc....].

Thanks

What size drive to what size drive? What types of drive? Are you going to install the old drive into the new server and clone that way? Acronis is good. Does it clone or only image? You can't go wrong with Macriun Server Edition. You want to make sure the backup software can restore to different hardware. It's hard to go wrong since you will still have the old drive. I would still make a complete backup of that drive first. You will likely need to expand that data after the restore.

Who makes the server?

I've used the free version of Macrium Reflect to image an older drive and reinstall to a new, larger drive. I did this on a home machine, and I'm pretty sure it would be a violation of the license to use it on a business machine.

But if Acronis comes free with your new drive, I'd just use it. Worse thing that happens is you can't restore to the larger drive and you have to put the old, smaller drive back and run off it until you find a solution that works.

Dr. Dino,

Where are you with this project. It would be easier to help you with some of those answers.

Hi,
Thanks for the response. I have done nothing yet, but will have to move soon. To answer some of the questions: I am going from an old 320Gig drive to a new 2 T drive. The 2008 server has bays for 2 hard drives but, I cannot seem to find where to "plug in" to the 2nd HD cable. I just hate to pay the local computer guys $220 for a new HD and cloning job unless I have too. That being said, my time is worth something. I will break open the server and check motherboard one last time before handing the job to someone else.

Once again, what brand computer is it? I really would like to know that.

Unless I am missing something, I don't think you can combine the two 1TB drives. They are different drives not a partition. You could connect them with RAID, but even with a RAID1 (which would be great) you would lose 1TB of space. But, they don't need to be connected. The first drive would house the OS and anything else. The second drive would be accessible in a seamless fashion.

Once you are set up with the drives, clone the old drive with cloning software and restore it to the first drive. You will have to expand it after, but that is fairly easy.

The other thing you could do is scrap the first 1TB HDD and get a Samsung 1TB SSD. Mine didn't cost all that much, and it was two years ago. You could install the OS and databases and read/writes would be much faster than on the spindle drives. The other advantage would be the cloning process. The cloning software for SSDs is amazingly simple. They come with a kit. You connect a USB drive to the new SSD. Run the software. Choose drive A (in the computer) and select clone to drive B. Runs in 45 minutes. Disconnect drive B and put in new server. Done. There may be drivers and a few tweaks.

If none of this is doable, $220 is ridiculously cheap to have it done and done right.

Here are typical SATA connectors on the motherboard:

Here is the SATA data cable needed from the MB port to the SATA HD:

Good answer. I mistook it to mean he was trying to connect them directly together. Man I hate those 90 degree handle SATA cables.