Hi Everyone, Does anyone here know how to Clone the start-up drive in Windows Home Server? I Keep getting warnings that the drive is failing. I pulled the drive out and hooked it to an external Sata/USB connection and it's showing that there two partitions on it. One with C: SYS (20GB) and the other is D: Data (445 GB). 500 GB total. I partitioned the 500 GB replacement drive the same way, but I just can't seem to get the data to transfer. Any Suggestions? Thanks In Advance....
But it is rocket science. The WHS Box is a HP Media Smart 475. No CD-rom, No VGA port. The only way to get into it is by RDP. I pulled the main drive and hooked it up to a SATA/USB Adapter and it is showing two partitions. (C:\sys and D:\Data). Now since this HP Media smart does not have a CD-ROM drive or a monitor port the only way I can think of cloning this drive before it fails is to pull it out and make an image of it. But the problem I'm facing is that when I connect this this drive to another computer new drive letters are assigned. i.e. H:\ J:\ Norton ghost records these images as such. My fear is that if do restore the image over to the new drive it's going to retain the drive letters H:\ and J:\ on the replacement drive which could really mess things up if I booted the server with the new drive.
I say try Norton Ghost anyway. Although I have no experience with it, I use Acronis True Image and Paragon Hard Drive Manager and both of those programs use their own temporary (and not matching) drive letter assignments. When I restore their backup images, it results with the original drive letters, never had a problem. And don't worry about the destination (replacement) drive. Anything on it is going to be overwritten by the backup image. No point in prepping it with anything. (I.E. - the replacement drive could be new with nothing on it. The restore operation would still work. Commonly referred to as a "bare metal" restore).
If the drive is too degraded, you may not be able to create a backup image. If that happens, copy all the data you can to another storage medium. Reinstall the OS to a new drive, then restore the data. If you do manage to create a backup image, be sure to verify it's integrity. Few things as sickening as a restore operation aborted due to a corrupt image.