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I have a Dell PowerEdge T110 server running Windows Server 2008 R2. It is a DC (among many other things) and runs my home network, but after 4 years in operation I am starting to get worried about it's one and only boot disk.

Server 2008 R2 resides on one Dell 250 GB OEM drive with no RAID and is connected to the integrated SATA controller.

I've learned a lot since then and now know that this is a very bad idea. I have a current offline clone of the drive, but I still would prefer a RAID configuration.

Now, what I want to try to do is (1) replace the aging 250 GB drive with a new 500 GB one, and (2) use a Dell SAS6iR RAID controller to create a RAID 1 array.

I was wondering first what would be the best way to migrate the installation from the original 250 GB drive to the new 500 GB drive, and secondly how to create a RAID 1 array with this existing disk without initializing it which would delete all the data on it.

I have three other Dell PowerEdge T110 II servers which all have two 1 TB drives and a SAS6iR card. When I set them up I had to initialize all of the disks which warned that all data would be deleted.

I was thinking that I could image the existing 250 GB disk onto the new 500 GB disk and expand the partition to get the first part of this migration complete. However, I am not sure how to get those disks into the array because of the initialization process.

Does anyone know how to get this done?

duggerd
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Image the system (as a backup) to an external disk, create the RAID1 internally - restore the image

If there are RAID drivers that you need, then install them before you do the initial imaging, may make your life easier :)

MichelZ
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  • Could I just use Clonezilla to sector by sector copy the old disk on to the new RAID array and have the RAID array stay working? Wouldn't mirroring the drive erase the RAID information on the new drive? – duggerd May 26 '14 at 13:11
  • I don't understand what you're getting at – MichelZ May 26 '14 at 15:06
  • Okay, say I put two blank 500 GB drives in a RAID 1 array in the server and then sector by sector copy the old disk's data to the new array. Would that work? – duggerd May 26 '14 at 15:43
  • Yes, that should work – MichelZ May 26 '14 at 15:45