Windows Server 2003 Disk Clone

Question

_{Tuesday, March 29, 2011 8:22 PM}

I would like to replace my hard drive on my Server 2003 system with a new one. Can I use any disk clone program to do this?

All replies (3)

_{Thursday, April 7, 2011 3:48 PM ✅Answered}

Ok here are my simple suggestion.

1. Buy/Use any seagate (or I think Maxtor drive is OK as well) hard-drive and they have a utility that will clone directly to the new hard-drive (free software from Seagate)

    Reference : http://www.seagate.com/support/discwizard/dw_ug.en.pdf

2.Try clonezilla - It is a freeware

http://clonezilla.org/screenshots.php?in_path=/00_Clonezilla

If the above doesn't seem to work for you - ping me, I can give you someother workaround.

Warm regards,

Prabakar

_{Wednesday, March 30, 2011 12:00 AM}

The straight forward solution would be as follows.

Step 1 : You can use the Windows Backup and backup the entire volume example to an external USB device.

Step 2 : Boot of the Windows Server CD/DVD media and choose the Install -> Repair option -> Then you should have an option to recover from the image from your external USB device (well this is what I see in 2008 server edition - so hope it should be same).

This should in no time restore your backup in your new drive well within 20 mins for 100GB of data (ofcourse your machine speed) - the new drive must be atleast the same size or more. Not if you have mirroring you will need to maintain the same number & (minimum) size of drives as well.

My experience the Seagate 1TB drives seems to work great and they are available at a reasonable cost.

There are other 3rd party software like Norton Ghost or Clonezilla which are capable of backing up or creating an image - you will have to play with them little bit and I think Norton doesn't work on the Windows Server edition.

Good luck!

_{Thursday, April 7, 2011 1:14 PM}

Thank you but from what I can see, Windows Backup is not available in Server 2003. Ghost won't do the back up on the Server edition nor will any of the other reasonable programs. I don't want to shell out $800 just to upgrade to a newer hard drive.

Thanks again.