instead of backup, you can take an image
many imaging products allow you to restore an image to a larger volume


"Jan" wrote in message
news:uKHmnGpaIHA.5348@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> We have a Dell PowerEdge server and the OS mirrored volume needs to be
> upgraded to larger disks. Is there a better way to do this other than
> taking a backup, replacing the disks, re-installing the OS and then
> restoring from my backup? I'd like to avoid the server being down that
long.
>
> I'm sure there must be some good products that can make this easier.
> Does anyone have one they swear by?
>
> Thanks

If you built the server with Server assist it probably wouldn't be a bad
idea to evacute the data and restore.

When you build your server with server assist, it first creates a FAT
partition and converst it to NTFS later in the build process (Dell is the
example here; the same is true for multiple vendors). This results in an
allocation unit size of 512 bytes which causes excessive transactional
overhead on the boot drive (read poor performance) You can check the
allocation unit or cluster size of a drive by running chkdsk in readonly
mode. The default allocation size (including those partitions created by
setup in windows 2000 SP3 or later) is 4K.

1. From the command line run chkdsk with no options. This runs chkdsk in
read only mode. Toward the bottom of the output, you'll see a line like
"512 bytes in each allocation unit."

2. In the disk defragmentation aplet in the MMC, select the disk and click
"analyze". After the disk is analyzed, click the "veiw report" button.
There is no need to actually defragment the disk. In the report, you'll see
a line like "cluster size = 512 bytes"

When an application sends an IO request larger than the allocation unit size
to the filesystem, NTFS splits the request into multiple IO requests of the
allocation unit size. You can see this with the perfmon physical disk
counter split IOs/sec. If the allocation unit size is 512 bytes, and the
application sends a 4K request, NTFS splits it into 8 512byte IOs and sends
8 IOs to the disk.

Format the new mirror and create your partitions first with a Windows setup
disk (yeah, you'll need a disk with the dell raid drivers handy). At this
point do your system state restore onto the new disks. You'll not only have
larger drives, you'll improve your performance as well.


"Jan" wrote in message
news:uKHmnGpaIHA.5348@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> We have a Dell PowerEdge server and the OS mirrored volume needs to be
> upgraded to larger disks. Is there a better way to do this other than
> taking a backup, replacing the disks, re-installing the OS and then
> restoring from my backup? I'd like to avoid the server being down that
> long.
>
> I'm sure there must be some good products that can make this easier. Does
> anyone have one they swear by?
>
> Thanks