Server Primary Drive Replacement

Whoop · 18 Jul 2018 at 09:30

Hi All,

I have a small business Dell exchange server which doesn't use RAID for the OS drive and this is now failing.

I was thinking of replacing it via Windows Server Backup and running a Bare Metal Recovery onto a new drive but how do I know it won't change during the backup/before I shutdown and drive swap.

Any tips?

paradigm · 18 Jul 2018 at 10:05

With WSB you should be able to do incremental backups after your first full.

Run a full backup whilst the server is live, then wait for a quiet period/maintenance window and pull the network/disable the network, run an incremental. Shut down and restore from there.

ubersonic · 31 Jul 2018 at 10:39

Another couple of options if they're of any use:

1: Buy a second HDD (of equal or larger size) and install it, then download the Ultimate Boot CD (Google it) on another machine and either burn it to disc or make a bootable USB stick with it (Rufus is a great app for turning .ISOs into USB sticks). Then boot the server form the disc/stick and use the tools to clone the failing drive to the new one, then shutdown, remove the original HDD and put the new one in it's place.

2: If your server supports it (it should), install a new HDD (of equal or larger size) and create a RAID 1 (mirror) array using the original drive as source (after the mirror is up and running you can remove the original HDD and install another new one giving you fault tolerance for the future).

Whoop · 31 Jul 2018 at 10:48

Thanks everyone, I should probably post an update now I've remembered it!

I went with the option of incremental backup and Bare Metal Recovery in the end, it was mostly successfully but the exchange still wrote a couple of log files to the primary drive which caused a sync error when it was all booted back up as they were missing. Renaming the logs folder and running eseutil pulled it back in line though.