Hardware upgrade

[DavidA]

I have a rather old W2000 server and I want to change the motherboard
and the hard disk. The old motherboard is a dual Celeron and the new
motherboard will be dual Athlon MP. The new hard disk will be RAID
0+1 on a hardware controller (Promise TX2000). I thought I should do
as follows:

1) Install the RAID controller and the 4 new disks in the old server,
install drivers and set up the RAID array.
2) Do a full backup to the RAID array. Make it bootable (how do I do
this?)
3) Remove the old disk.

This now gives me the old server motherboard with the new disk.

4) Build the new computer using the new motherboard, the new hard disk
but all other hardware unchanged.

5) Perform an in-place upgrade? (HAL should be the same - dual
processor ACPI).

6) Change any remaining hardware (eg network adaptor).

Does this make sense?

Regards,
David Adamson

 

[Guest]

You can not change motherboard and CPU and cross fingers
as if changing audio or network card!

I have a question for you:
Is your Windows 2000 a domain controller?
If the reply is NO, then a solution to your question
exists and most of the times, it work just fine!

First, backup your server, then use the SYSPREP utility
found on the Windows 2000 CDROM, in the SUPPORT directory,
indide one of the CAB files. Run the SYSPREP from the
command prompt using the -pnp switch. The servers shuts
down then. Use the third party software to clone the
Hard Disk(s) into an image (for example Norton Ghost).

This is done by booting from a floppy or other methods
of booting, then running the clone software. After cloning,
the image of the old server should be accessible from a
path "other HD, CD, or DVD or another form of magnetic
support". Like this, you perform a restore on the NEW
server hardware, i.e. on your dual Athlon server.

After restoring the image on the new server, turn on your
server. You will see a mini setup wizzard. The -pnp switch
actually tells the system to force plug and play to search
for changes/modifications/addition/removal/upgrade of
hardware. You need to re-enter the name and the domain
that your old server was hooked to.

If your Server is a domain controller, then you can NOT
run SYSPREP. I suggest to install a clean Windows 2000
on the new hardware, add it to the domain, make it another
domain controller of your existent domain (like this you
get a mirror copy of your Active directory database into
the second DC), move the shared folders and all objects
into the second DC. Move the infrastructure master, RID
master, PDC emulator, operation master, and Global Catalog
to the second DC, remove the first DC from the network by
taking it offline.

 

[DavidA]

It is a domain controller, so I would have to do the more complex
operation described below. I am not at all expert on the operations
you are talking about - can you give me pointers to more information
on the process please?

Thanks,
DavidA

 

[DavidA]

I'd like to thank the people who responded, and also others who have
responded to similar questions elsewhere. In the end, I seem to have
made things work. Here is what I did:

1) Full back up, including system state.
2) Installed new RAID controller & 4 disks. (Had trouble formatting
it - I had to remove the disk on the IDE channel and boot from W2000
CD and get that to format it - then reconnect the IDE disk and that
gave me the RAID array as a formatted drive D)
3) Took another backup (forgot to do system state and forgot to
exclude the previous backup file so it was a large backup file!)
4) Copied the backup files to the RAID array - these were the only
files on it.
5) Made an Emergency Recovery Disk
6) Transferred the RAID array to the new PC.
7)Booted from setup CD and tried to do a repair using only the ERD and
the backup file on the disk. This seemed to nearly work, but not
quite.
8) Went to plan B. Did a new install on the RAID array in the new PC
without re-formatting the disk (so the backup files were preserved).
9) Did a full restore, including system state (fromt he backup BEFORE
the RAID driver had been installed). This successfully turned the new
PC into the "same" as the old one EXCEPT for the unfortunate fact that
the network card was different (I think I could have avoided this
problem by temporarily using the network card from the old server!)
10) Discovered that the static IP address I had previously used for
the server (and which I didn't want to change) was still assigned to a
phantom network card which was the one that belonged in the old
server.
11) Tried to fix this by moving the network card from the old server
to the new - this didn't work - the card appeared as a new instance of
the same type and the phantom was still there.
12) Searched through the registry for entries of "Netgear" - the old
card was a Netgear one and the new one was "D-Link". Deleted all the
registry entries that I could (I wasn't allowed to delete some). This
was risky, but I still had Plan C in reserve because the old server
was still fully functional and I could have made the new one a
secondary domain controller and done the dcpromo stuff.
13) Re-started and tried to set the IP addres to the one I wanted.
This worked, and from then on, my new PC "looks" to the rest of the
network, just like the old one.