in news:
[email protected]:
What is the best/quickest way to move the user data to a bigger hard
disk? The current HD is a 16Gb SCSI which I want to replace with a
73Gb SCSI drive.
My original plan was:-
do a full backup of the existing drive, using Arcserve 2000
remove the 16Gb disk and replace with the 73Gb
format the new disk
restore the data from the backup
Is this the quickest way? I want to minimise downtime whilst having
the safety net of not touching the original disk.
This way will preserve all the existing share and security
information, will it not?
thanks in advance
Andrew
Don't know Arcserve other than to guess it is just a backup utility
(that does *logical* rather than physical copying). If you're using
tape, it won't be fast. You'll have to do a full backup (with system
state), run a verify after the backup to ensure each tape has the
correct and exact copy of each file and that the tapes can be read (what
good is a critical backup from which you cannot read later?), and then
perform the full restore. Tapes are pretty slow, although having a copy
is still a good idea.
For fastest switch over, I would think you could install the old drive
as slave in the new system and use something like Drive Image to copy
over the old smaller drive into the new drive (in a partition large
enough to hold all the sectors, or into a much larger partition, like
one encompassing the entire size of the new drive). Drive to drive
copying would be far faster, and the copying would be by sector
(physical) rather than by file (logical). Install Drive Image first on
the old drive so you can then have it create a bootable floppy to run it
from that, then move the old drive as slave (either slave on the same
IDE port as the new drive or primary on a different IDE port than the
new drive), and boot using the Drive Image bootable floppy.
There are probably other drive imaging products than Powerquest's Drive
Image. Their PartitionMagic also has a drive copy function. Norton's
Ghost probably works, too (but be sure to use a physical copy rather
than logical which, I believe, is the default). Since you are booting
using the Drive Image bootable floppy, you won't be touching the old
drive except to read it to move its data to the new drive. If the new
drive has no partitions, it is guaranteed that you don't accidentally
copy in the reverse direction (new disk to old disk) because there would
be no partition to duplicate on the new disk.
You still might want to do a full backup w/system state onto tape just
to provide a backup to your customer, especially if they never do
backups themselves. Then when they later hose the system or get a
virus, you have a base image from which to restore their system. I use
tapes for incremental backups of data only. I use CD-R media for disk
images since those need to be more reliable, less susceptible to
environmental damage (like EMI), and consume less space. Drives are
getting so huge now that eventually I'll have to get a DVD-/+R drive, or
just buy another removable drive to save the disk image(s), but drive
mechanisms fail and are prone to shock damage.
