Replacing Hard Drive

[Gerald]

What is the best way replace the hard drives in my Windows 2000 Server?
I have two mirrored 80GB IDE hard drives that are three years old.

I am now thinking that I can disconnect one of them and put a new hard drive
in its place, and then format it, reactivate volume and resynchronize
mirror.
On success, repeat the process to replace the other drive.

Just wanted some input/suggestions before doing this.

Gerald

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

What is the best way replace the hard drives in my Windows 2000 Server?
I have two mirrored 80GB IDE hard drives that are three years old.

I am now thinking that I can disconnect one of them and put a new hard drive
in its place, and then format it, reactivate volume and resynchronize
mirror.
On success, repeat the process to replace the other drive.

Just wanted some input/suggestions before doing this.

Gerald

Your basic idea is good but you need to add a few twists
to make it work. Do this in this order:
1. Format a floppy disk on your server.
2. Copy these hidden files to the floppy disk:
c:\ntldr, c:\ntdetect.com, c:\boot.ini
3. Boot the server with this floppy disk to convince yourself
that it works.
4. Break the mirror.
5. Label the two old disks as OldMaster and OldSlave.
6. Swap OldMaster and OldSlave and connect one of the
new disks to the secondary controller.
7. Boot the machine with your floppy boot disk.
8. Partition the new disk, mark it as "active", format it and
label it NewMaster.
9. Use xcopy.exe with the appropriate switches to copy
OldMaster to NewMaster. Make sure to include hidden files,
attributes and security descriptors.
10. Disconnect all hard disks, then connect NewMaster as the
primary master disk.

Your server should now boot as normal. As a last step, install
the remaining new disk and create a mirror.

Since you are not changing anything on the old disks (other than
breaking the mirror), the method is safe and completely reversible.