3 replies to this topic

[bigrut2008]

Hey guys.. I am actually deployed to Afghanistan right now so i have limited time on the computer. I searched through the forum but didn't really see anything that related directly to my scnerio so here is what I got and I apoligize if this was actually posted somewhere else....

I have a 750gb HDD right now with WHS installed on it. I had another 750 crash on me a month ago so there is only one drive inside my tower. I want to replace the 750 with a 2TB WD enterprise drive so I dont have to worry about the darn thing crashing for a long while.

So what I am wondering is to find out what the best method to xfer all the OS and shares to the new drive and if it will work. I have used Acronis to fully image drives and put them on other disks of different sizes... has a nice feature to expand the available space to cover the whole drive.

Will this work???? I am thinking it should because its only one drive and there is no drive extender issues to deal with. My only concern is what program to use to clone the drive, and then expand the pool to the full 2tb instead of 750gb.

I am going to be home soon for 2 weeks R&R and want to get this setup while I am home so I will have limited time.

Once again, I am sorry if this was posted somewhere else.

Thanks guys,

Jason

[GaPony]

Cloning the drive is highly problematic. Why not just toss the new drive into the system and add it to the pool?

[bigrut2008]

Thats what i was worried about... but the reason I need to swap drives is cause its a WD "green" drive... i already messed one drive up and dont want to loose another... the drive is on all day basically streaming throughout my house and through my FTP so I need to get a good solid drive for it which is why I got a 2TB WD enterprise drive.

[GaPony]

I wouldn't worry alot about the drive being green... A brand new Enterprise drive is just as likely to fail as a two year old green drive. My dad's server has 7 WD green drives that have been running 24/7 for over two years, without any signs of failure. One could fail tomorrow, or keep running for another 2 or 3 or 5 years. Enterprise class drives are built for extra reliability in a punishing RAID environment. They don't necessarily offer one bit more of a guarantee against failure than a green drive when used as the system drive. The same is true for a pool drive. They might be spinning all the time, but they're not getting much abuse.

I know you're probably skeptical of this response, but it really is true.

By using the Enterprise drive to the pool, it will be the target for data and will take all the punishment. As long as there is free space on the second drive (the 2TB drive) the system drive and it's D: partition will remain relatively untouched. No data will be wriiten to the physical D: partition of the system drive unless the 2TB drive becomes completely full..... or you duplicate data, in which case its just a repository for the duplicates.