RAID5 upgrade

[Sam C.S. Wong]

I have a Dell server running Windows 2000 and SQL 2000 on hardware RAID
5 array of 3 36GB disks. It's just a standalone server.

I purchased 3 new 140GB SCSI disks and want to replace all the
existings disks in the server.

What I plan to do are:

i) Stop all the services like SQL / DHCP
ii) Use NTBACKUP to backup EVERYTHING to the connected DLT tape drive.
iii) Open up the chasis and take out all the disks and put in news
disks
iv) Recreate new logical disk with the RAID card BIOS.
v) Reinstall a temp copy of Windows 2000 server ie C:\Wintemp
vi) Restore EVERYTHING from the backup that created in step ii)

Will this work or is there any better alternatives?

Thanks.

Sam

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

I have a Dell server running Windows 2000 and SQL 2000 on hardware RAID
5 array of 3 36GB disks. It's just a standalone server.

I purchased 3 new 140GB SCSI disks and want to replace all the
existings disks in the server.

What I plan to do are:

i) Stop all the services like SQL / DHCP
ii) Use NTBACKUP to backup EVERYTHING to the connected DLT tape drive.
iii) Open up the chasis and take out all the disks and put in news
disks
iv) Recreate new logical disk with the RAID card BIOS.
v) Reinstall a temp copy of Windows 2000 server ie C:\Wintemp
vi) Restore EVERYTHING from the backup that created in step ii)

Will this work or is there any better alternatives?

Thanks.

Sam

Your method should work. Here is an alternative method that
does not require a temp copy of Windows and that is probably
faster than saving/retrieving everything to tape:
1. Manufacture a Bart PE boot CD (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/#download)
2. Buy an IDE disk of suitable size. They are cheap!
3. Partition it to suit your current partitioning scheme.
4. Connect it to your server.
5. Boot the server with your Bart PE CD.
6. Use xcopy.exe to copy your RAID partitions to the IDE disk.
Use the /s /h /k /o /x /c switches.
7. Prepare your new RAID array.
8. Reverse the command from Step 6.

There is a downside: Manufacturing a Bart PE boot CD will
take a few hours of your time. On the other hand I think it
is an extremely useful tool that no system administrator should
be without.