re-partition cost?

Ish

Ish

Ish

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Hi

When our server was originally setup the c: drive was set too small and it is now causing us problems.

What should we expect to pay for the following job as we don't want to get ripped off:-

1) move all data from our server to our NAS drive (60Gb of data)
2) increase the size of the size of the c: partition
3) move all data back to the server

TIA
 
Our support company say it's a days work and are charging over £700 :eek:

We will be looking for another company when our contract expires but for now we are unsure what to do.

It's not something we can do oursleves as our server is business critical and we wouldn't want to make a mess of the job.
 
Ish
If I remember rightly from previous posts your using SBS 2003??

What is the size of your C: drive?
Have you moved the ClientApps Folder off of C?
Have you moved the Exchange DB of C?
Have you moved Users Shared Folders off C?

There is a lot you can do with SBS to free up space on a O/S Partition
Rob
 
Yes, SBS 2003

What is the size of your C: drive? 12GB
Have you moved the ClientApps Folder off of C? Not sure
Have you moved the Exchange DB of C? Yes
Have you moved Users Shared Folders off C? Yes
 
OK, 12GB is small, but manageable.
Here is a link to the KB on how to move the ClientApps folder http://support.microsoft.com/kb/830254

Also, you can move or delete the NTUninstall folders from the Windows Directory, Delete some of the SMTP Logs (Windows\System32\Logfiles). Whilst in the Log files directory, have a look at the other folders and reduce as needed.
Delete the files in the TEMP directory
Are you running R2 SBS? If so, move the WSUS Database
If your running the PREM. of SBS look at reducing your ISA Log files or move to another drive.

To be fair to your support company, it could well be a days work to re partition the drive. Remember SBS is not like a normal desktop PC. The OS partition will be fragmented, due to the Exchange logs, Page files ect... so, extending a partition is not going to be easy and WILL cause problems if rushed.

Rob
 
Personally i wouldnt ever contemplate re-sizing the partition on a domain controller specially not an SBS server. Firstly it requires third party software and secondly would be a potential rebuild if anything went wrong.

If you have already moved all the usual items such as user shared folders, company data, exchnage DB's, Logs, SQL DB's, un-install file etc what else have you got install on the C: drive to use up 12Gb of space?
 
I have done this a few years ago by mirroring the partition onto another drive and then breaking the mirror (to make an exact copy of the main drive if things don't go to plan), on the initial drive ( c: ) I then ran Paragon partition manager to resize the partition.

not the correct way by any means but took about half hour and worked a treat.
 
yashiro said:
Hehe. Pure gold. I hope it's not the same people who actually set up the miniscule 'C' drive. :)
Click to expand...

Well 12gb was plenty a few years ago ;)

Weve still got clients with 8gb C partitions lol cos theyre too cheap to get it resized or to upgrade.
 
Ish, I doubt you'll find many who will do it cheaper tbh.
It will be based on taking an image of the server as is which can take hours before you even start any work (change control, etc).

If you can get hold of the software though, the way to do it would be:

Acronis True Image Server - take a complete 'outside of OS' image for when you balls up the first attempt :p
Acronis Disk Director - to resize the system partition.

Other tools are available but the above 'just works' IME.

A quick look at the Acronis website reveals:

ATI for SBS: £299
Disk Director Server: £285

If you're not renewing the contract, might be worth considering ^. I recommend the Universal Restore option for SBS too, in case you upgrade the server at some point.
 
Ish said:
Hi

When our server was originally setup the c: drive was set too small and it is now causing us problems.

What should we expect to pay for the following job as we don't want to get ripped off:-

1) move all data from our server to our NAS drive (60Gb of data)
2) increase the size of the size of the c: partition
3) move all data back to the server

TIA
Click to expand...

Download a copy of TreeSize onto your server. There's a version you don't need to install - just run the exe which is this version here -> http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/TreeSizeFree.zip

It'll sort all of the folders on your C drive for you in order of size, which I have found incredibly usefull in working out where all the space has gone. It'll let you identify the folders that will make the biggest difference in freeing up space. As an example, it may be that your ntbackup catalogue's have grown massive.
 
12gb is more than enough for a SBS install with all current SPs/Patching.

Move the Exchange DBs which will take all of 5 minutes + data copy time.

Thats the only thing I can think of on a SBS install that will accumulate in any significant size over time.

Obviously any 3rd party apps which use the C drive for storage will use up space but that is something you would need to advise on.

A days work sounds a liiiitle overkill. Its going to be a fair degree of work for them to do a full migration onto new disks but a whole day, for the kind of sizes you are talking, well - I would ask for a breakdown of work to be done. Relatively risky task too, I hope they are up to the job!

You know they are not if all of a sudden VSS stops working on the migrated OS :p (And if VSS does break send them my way and I'll charge them £70 for the fix :D)

Edit - For reference I put in a £1400 bill for 13 hours of work at time and a half (out of hours) for a migration of an OS onto a new mirror, DATA onto Raid-5.
 
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If its not a dynamic disk you might just be able to resize it in place with the gparted boot CD - take a backup first though!

What's the physical disk configuration of the server? I'd definitely want to see the Exchange (and other DB) transaction logs on different spindles/arrays.

I often use these sorts of situations as a good excuse for a server rebuild. A lot of servers i've seen have been managed by lots of people, most of whom dont seem to know what they are doing so things end up in a mess pretty quickly. You could take a backup of the data, reinstall SBS and recover it within a day.
 
It's also worth clearing out the logs that are over a week/month old from C:\WINDOWS\system32\LogFiles as SBS stores logs from when it's set up initially. I reclaimed over 4Gb doing that on our SBS server recently.

Rather than just deleting them, it'd probably be a good idea to archive them somewhere else & there is a utility to do just that based on date/timestamp so you can script it ot move logfiles more than x amount old.

Link1

Link2
 
Don't forget that unless they are cowboys they aren't going to just turn up, do the work and go. As has been mentioned they will need to ensure backups and follow some change control procedure - so anyone saying its a 10 min job is a cowboy.
 
if its a critical server then £700 to have it done properly with no downtime to your users is a pretty good insurance policy.

if theres free space can that be made into a mount point folder on the C drive?(or whatever its called on windows) and move some stuff to that?

also delete all the old uninstall folders for patches and service packs could be an option to claim back some space or move the pagefile to another disk etc
 
Richard_16v said:
Don't forget that unless they are cowboys they aren't going to just turn up, do the work and go. As has been mentioned they will need to ensure backups and follow some change control procedure - so anyone saying its a 10 min job is a cowboy.
Click to expand...

Hmm I don't see how this is the case, if you are happy to use software designed for this purpose then it "could" be a quick job... why over complicate the situation? take a backup use the software and move onto the next issue.

some people seem to get to tied up in the documentation and procedures to follow, seems like a good way to drag out a pretty simple task into a day and £700 to me.
 
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