Moving Windows server 2008 installation to other harddisk

[VJ]

Hello,

I would like to move a current installation of Windows server 2008 to a different harddisk. It is a system on an old computer, currently installed on an 18 GB SCSI disk. While this more than sufficed several years ago, now it has gotten to the point where just the windows installation barely fits. I would like to move it to a different SCSI disk on the same controller.

Currently, the disk in the computer are:
On the onboard SCSI channel A, ID 0: IBM 18 GB (C; Windows) and ID 1: Seagate Cheetah 70 GB (D) . I would like to move the Windows from the IBM to the Seagate. The Seagate can then become the C drive. The computer also has a Promise FT SX4300, which holds 4 SATA disks. I have enough diskspace on the SATA disks to make copies of both the IBM and the Seagate.
(edit: forgot to add. The SATA disks are on a Promise FT SX4300, for which drivers can be problematic. I do have big enough USB drives to hold the copies of the Seagate and the IBM)

What is the easiest way to make this move?

Thanks!

Jörg

[Umfriend]

I would use the native WS2008 Server Backup and Restore function. I *think* it is also standard on WS2008R1, not entirely sure.

[VJ]

I have not installed the backup/restore feature for this server and I'm now fully out of disk space. Disk cleanup cannot recover anything more and I cannot get more than 400 MB free space (it is a mostly empty installation, which just the really necessary software installed). My license has also reached the limit for activations and I cannot activate a new installation. Even though it is on the same machine, it seems to consider it a hardware change. I can call MS for increasing the limit, but it is more complicated (I already had to make such a call for Windows 7; I would prefer to just manage without reactivation).

I found that Clonezilla can clone a harddisk when booting from a live cd, so am more looking at something like that.

[Umfriend]

Ah, yes, that would be an issue. I am a bit surprised it is an installable feature but with just 400MB free, I can imagine backup to fail anyway.

AFAIK, using Server Backup/Restore would not actually require activation. But that is based on my experience with WHS2011 (which is WS2008-based).

But yeah, I think any cloning software could do the trick as well. And if it does, I would recommend using the backup/restore functionality in any case.

Also, in my experience, I often can free up a lot more space besides using disk cleanup. Various installation files, temp files etc remain that can be found an deleted. If helps to have some volume mapping software to find relatively large folders that may have useless data. But cloning may be a good first try.

[VJ]

Initially, the installation took up less, but with updates it just started growing. I was down to few MB of diskspace, and managed to get it up to 800 MB by cleaning updates and so on. It immediately took 400 MB back for its own operation though. A clean updated install of the same windows turns out to need the same amount of diskspace.

I was just hoping that people had experiences here: I'm quite stuck with proprietary and legacy hardware (U320 scsi, old raid controller that has no drivers for Linux beyond RHEL9, ...), so need to keep the Windows server system to keep this computer operational (it does not run well on Windows 7). I need to be sure not to mess up the installation... :-). I do have an image of the system, made using PING, so I should be able to restore it if things go bad.

[Umfriend]

But you don;t use the 70GB HDD now, right? Simply restore image to that one and disconnect 18GB HDD I would say... And if this installation is critical then I would definately use Server Backup/Restore thereafter.

[UtwigMU]

Boot knoppix / gparted / xubuntu on USB. Old rhel or debian should be fine. you only need dd command which is standard on every linux.

fdisk-l
hdparm -i /dev/sdX (X= old / Y = new drive)

Do above to determine which drive is which. DO NOT copy new drive over OLD drive. Also make backup before doing any copying.

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY

poweroff

disconnect old drive
don't boot windows with both drives

Boot of new drive. If something doesn't work you still have old drive. You can resize partition in disk management in windows.

[VJ]

But you don;t use the 70GB HDD now, right? Simply restore image to that one and disconnect 18GB HDD I would say... And if this installation is critical then I would definately use Server Backup/Restore thereafter.

Well, that one contains other applications, but I can clear that one and reserve it for the Windows installation. PING however does not allow me to restore to a different harddisk.

Boot knoppix / gparted / xubuntu on USB. Old rhel or debian should be fine. you only need dd command which is standard on every linux.

fdisk-l
hdparm -i /dev/sdX (X= old / Y = new drive)

Do above to determine which drive is which. DO NOT copy new drive over OLD drive. Also make backup before doing any copying.

dd if=/dev/sdX of=/dev/sdY

poweroff

disconnect old drive
don't boot windows with both drives

Boot of new drive. If something doesn't work you still have old drive. You can resize partition in disk management in windows.

Interesting!
I'll have to check for driver support of the SCSI controller (Adaptec 39320, aic-7902) which holds the harddisks, but as that one was quite popular it most likely will be included in the live cds.
Do I have to prepare something for the target drive? Or will the dd command take care of it?

[UtwigMU]

dd does bit by bit copy. So it will copy first MBA sector with partition table and then all the bits from the old drive to the new drive.

Only thing is be sure you don't blank the source drive unintentionally and don't boot windows with both drives attached. Change boot order to USB, CD, SATA, Windows and put some bootable CD. If windows sees two identical drives it tries to "correct" the problem and once you pull old drive it needs boot/startup repairs.

If you want to watch progress you can open another terminal (CTRL+ALT+F2) and send USR1 to PID of dd

pidof dd or ps aux | grep dd

kill -USR1 XXXX (where XXXX is PID of dd process). Switch to other terminal and read. Also for speed it's best to do something like bs=1M to 10M (bs = block size)

Example:
dd if=/dev/sdx of=/dev/sdy bs=4M

If something happens just do dd again. If you suspect bad sectors or get read errors do dd_rescue instead (it's slower but reads as much as it can, good for data rescue. Not all live CDs have dd_rescue, knoppix has it.

After that you will probably want to set up boot on SCSI card and Windows will boot but want reboot to finish installing new hardware.

[VJ]

Thanks for the hints! I found on the Clonezilla websites the same warnings regarding booting the PC with both disks installed after they are cloned. It does mean that I will have to disconnect it prior to booting after cloning, but also that I will have to wipe the disk (if cloning is successful) from e.g. the rescue disk or just format it from the scsi bios.

I'll first make a new image with PING, to be sure to have the latest backup of the system, and then will start messing around with it. It will take me some time before I can report back though, as I do not have much time in the evenings to work on it.

[UtwigMU]

To clear a MBR disk EDIT: so that windows sees it as fresh, you just need to wipe first part. Bootsector with partition table is enough but I usually wipe first few MB.

So command is:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=1M count=1

I messed up cloning a GPT disk (it's harder to clone to different size since partition table is at the end and I was cloning to smaller size) with clonezilla last week. It was no problem since it was only a fresh windows installation.

[VJ]

One more thing... do I need to make a partition or so? (I suspect not, the way dd works, but want to be sure)...

[UtwigMU]

One more thing... do I need to make a partition or so? (I suspect not, the way dd works, but want to be sure)...

No, dd clones disk.

If you want to speed up process but more risky:
(optionally shrink partitions on source disk with gparted)

dd first megabyte, poweroff, boot again (linux doesn't always detect new partitions correctly, you can try partx -a but reboot is 100% sure, risky because it may boot from HDD). clone each partition to partition:

/dev/sdx1 to /dev/sdy1
/dev/sdx2 to /dev/sdy2

[VJ]

It worked!

I first made an image of the original harddisk (it was /dev/sda1), then executed the dd command you posted. I decided not to mess with it to see the progress or so and just issued the basic command and waited. I'm not sure how long it took (I went grocery shopping, not to nervously look at the system the whole time :-)), but for sure less than two hours.
I disconnected sda1 and rebooted... First I forgot to remove the CD, so it booted again from that one... Next time it gave an "Operating system not found" as the boot order in bios was giving priority to a different harddisk, but after correcting that it just booted without any problems from the new disk! Resizing the partition in Windows was no problem.

The old harddisk was apparently the noisiest of the bunch (or it caused more vibrations), so the system is actually much more quiet without it. I will leave the old one disconnected and keep it as a backup of the system (if I need to reinstall it, I can do the dd command again).

I lost the applications that were installed on the D drive (I knew I would, so that is no problem), so now I'm just reinstalling those.

Thanks again for helping me with this!


edit: I used my rescue cd PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost), as it is linux based, works with the system (some new linuxes have problems with the old system due to pae support issues and so) and had the dd command.