I need some help on this NT server.

[MaMister]

My office has a old NT server with 2 x 2.1GB harddisk.

We use it for store up files backup, share printer and some stand alone programs.

Now we would like to get a new pc with new harddisks.

The question is what is the best way to copy the entire old harddisk over to the new one, and just on the new pc and ready to use.

By the way the new harddisk is 40GB.

Thanks.

[Gobi]

Hmmm....hi there btw, :)
It depends what options you got for moving the data.
You also doesnt mention if you need to use the systemfiles
from the old machine on the new one, or if you are goin
to install a newer NT version on that machine.
Well, if you just move the system over to the new machine,
and power it up and cross your fingers that everything will
work normally, you are taking a big chance if you ask me.
The old system is installed upon an older systemconfiguration
than the one you are going to use, so if you move the
system it will get very unstable.
My suggestion is that you install the new server on its own,
make a partition of a couple of GB, and install the system, then
leave that part of the server alone, and use the other partition
for files and programs.

To move the files:
1. The easiest way is if you have a network you can move
them through. Mount up the old one through the new one,
and just cut'n'paste.
2. No network / or network trouble , a cd burner is nice to have.
(If you want to transfer the system, Norton Ghost is a
nice program).

Well, if you write a little more about the system, and the thing
you want to have done, I'll try to be of any assistance.

Later
Gobi.

BTW, THIS WAS MY POST NR 100 !!! (Weeeeee....) :)
(yeah, i know its a low number, but hey, its a start).

[Sterling_Aug]

You will NOT be able to move the operating system and expect it to work. Using Norton Ghost would copy the operating system and all of the files perfectly, but Win NT does NOT like to changing hardware and booting up after something has changed. It requires the Service Pack to be reapplied before it will work again.

I would upgrade the entire system to Win2000 Server and then move in the backup files and shared applications and printers.

[MaMister]

Thanks guys.

How many harddisks can I put in if I have a 235Watts powersupply?

Why there is things like 500Watts powersupply in the market, what are they for ??

The reason I asked is because I thought of getting a harddisk controller Raid IDE card to make my system hold up to seven harddisks.

What is RAID anyway. Is it easy to setup ??

[vtrucker]

As said before just moving the old hd to the new machine could cause problems.
If you have the OS and all your programs, printer drivers etc then i would go for a new install - then copy all the backup files to the new system.

As for raid where do you start.

RAID = Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives

Primary use of RAID is for Fault Tolerance i.e protecting your data in the event of a hardware failure.

RAID has six levels (of which 3 are not used), and the remaining three are split into 2 types

Disk Striping and Disk Mirroring

Disk Mirroring - Mirrors one hard drive to another, the mirrored drive contains an exact replica of the data stored on the primary drive.

Benefits - Fastest form of data recovery, if primary disk fails, due to mirroring, all you doo is to switch to the mirrored drive.

Disadvantages - Because you are using one controller to write to 2 drives and all data is written twice, you get a performance decrease on write operations.

Disk Mirroring is known as RAID 1

Disk Striping has 2 forms, without parity = RAID 0,
with parity = RAID 5

Disk Striping - Using up to a maximum of 32 drives to store the data. all drives in a stripe set must be the same size, Disk Striping spreads the data across all the drives in the stripe set.

Advantages - because all the drives in the stripe set will be assigned a single drive letter, and the data is written evenly across all the drives, using different controllers you get an increase in drive performance,

Disk Striping with Parity (RAID 5) is Fault Tolerant i.e if one drive fails you can reclaim the data on that drive.

Disk Striping without Parity (RAID 0) is not Fault Tolerant i.e if one of the drives in the stripe set fails you lose all the data on all of the drives in the stripe set.

Example. You have a stripe set containing five 2 gig drives.
with RAID 0 you have 10 gig assigned to one drive letter. but if one drive fails all the data is lost.
with RAID 5 you have a total of 8 gig assigned to one drive letter, because of Parity all drives have a percentage of their space used up with copies of data on the other drives. If 1 drive fails all the data on that drive is also stored on all the other drives so that you can regenerate the data when you replace the faulty drive.


SETTING UP RAID

RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 5 are supported on NT4 Server.
Only RAID 0 is supported on NT4 Workstation

To set up RAID on NT4 use Administrative Tools - Disk Administrator - Fault Tolerance


Hope This Explains RAID for you.

[MaMister]

thanks vtrucker for all that info.

Can win2kpro run raid or only in win2k server ?

[bushmaster]

Yes it works fine in 2kpro.

[MaMister]

Hi, finally decided to upgrade the harddisk to a 20GB 7200RPM. Ask the hardware manufacturer and confirm can take 20GB.

My question is, if we clone 2.1Gb to 20Gb. where will the rest of the space go to ?

What is the max partition space a ntfs nt4 system can create?

Thanks.

[missiveusa]

What is the max partition space a ntfs nt4 system can create?

Check here (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prkc_fil_tdrn.asp) for NTFS info.