NetServer Disk Upgrade Help Please

[George C.]

Hi,

Any advice on how to upgrade SCSI disks on NetServer is appreciated.

Our server currently has two 18.2 GB disks. It runs Windows Server 2003 and applications. OS is installed on C drive and applications are installed on D drive. Found 73.4GB 10K RPM 'Hot Swap' Ultra3 SCSI3 Hard Drive Module - Low Profile P3577-69001 in HP parts store online. If I buy 2 of these disks, how do I install and get the machine run the same OS and apps as now.

[Terri Harris]

What Netserver model do you have?

[George C.]

I have a NetServer LPr PIII 550

[George C.]

The box said NetServer LPr. HP helped look up and got this as model:

Net Server lc2000/lc2000r

[Terri Harris]

The P3577a is supported by HP in the Netserver LC2000 or LC2000r (and the LPr). But as you may be aware HP did not test Windows 2003. Are you going to pull out both 18 GB drives and just have the new drives? Then do a new install of the OS?

[George C.]

We need to pull out both disks and start to use new disks because the current configuration made free space on both C and D drives going low at the same time. Our time constraints us from reloading OS and apps. We cannot afford to reconfigure the applications.

Somebody told me that I may need to backup my current C and D to external tape device. Install new disks and then restore from tape. Will this approach work? What do I need to be aware of? After I insert new disks, do I need to load some kind of OS before I can restore from tape? Before I load OS, do I need to format the new disks or do any preparation? Thanks.

[Terri Harris]

George,

If you backup current drives and then restore backup to new 2 x 72 GB drives your C: partition will still be the same size. This will also be true of the D: partition. Only 3rd party software like Partition Magic (this is not an HP endorsement!) is required to increase the size of your C: partition.
So doing a backup & restore to bigger drives is not going to give you the desired result without software to allow you to increase the size of the partitions. Microsoft itself has no built-in or add-on utility that allows increasing the size of your C drive. You can increase the D partition using Microsoft's Disk Manager.

[George C.]

Thanks for your insights. I was afraid that we could run into something like this. Any other approaches then? All because of the SMS that runs on it...

[Sean T. Craig]

Hi George,

Another thing you need to consider is which controller the hard drives are connected to. Is it a RAID Controller or just a standard SCSI? Is it possible that your C: and D: drives are just partitions on the same Logical Drive?

With a RAID controller, you can attempt something like this (which is unsupported by HP):
Add the 2 new hard drives and configure another RAID array.

Use a third-party disk cloning software (like Norton Ghost) to clone the contents of one disk onto the other.

Remove the original drives and recreate your RAID configuration using the same values but DO NOT INITIALIZE the array.

The server should then boot to the new drives.

The same really holds true when using a standard SCSI Controller. You can add the 2 new drives and clone the C: drive onto one drive and the D: onto the other. You can then remove the old drives and move the new ones into their slots so that they end up with the same SCSI ID's that they are replacing.

Keep in mind that this is an unsupported solution and if it doesn't work, HP cannot help you correct it.

Hope this is of some value,

Sean T. Craig Sr. C.E.T., M.C.P.

[David F. Drucker]

Partition Magic and Norton Ghost are great utilities. I've used both for years with no unreconcilable problems. BUT, they are both fussy about not running on Server OS's. PM may have a server version (pricey), and an older version of Ghost may be able to do an image copy. Your only downside is maybe some wasted time since all the manipulation will be with the new drives - just keep your old drives safe and unchanged until the new ones are up and running.