...or should I say in the HDD?
At work I manage 3 servers. The domain controller is a Windows 2003 server (std ed) with 3x72.8 GB HDD in RAID 5 ( 1 volume) = ~145 GB.
We are running low on disk space in a couple of partitions so I had them buy a couple extra HDD to go to 5x72.8 GB HDD in RAID 5 (1 volume) =~290 GB.
To increase the volume size, there is no ther way than deleting everything and recreating the partitions = not fun at all! We are using Veritas Backup Exec 9 and, while looking for the best easiest way to recover evrything, I've stumbled upon horror stories about people not able to restore users, user rights or other Active Directory niceties from a BE backup.
So I was looking for another procedure and I realized that I could do everything with a KNOPPIX boot linux CD: I could copy bit-to-bit the whole volume onto an IDE HDD, increase the volume size, make a new partition table, copy back from the IDE drive the small partitions in the larger ones and then use ntfsresize to increase the file system size to match the partitions.
I just did that on a standalone computer and it worked.
This friday evening, I made a fresh backup, ran chkdsk -f on every partition and started to copy the volume onto the IDE drive.
Saturday atfernoon the copy was done and I could mount every partition in linux. I copied the original MBR and partition table onto a usbdisk as another backup...
I installed the 2 new HDDs, created the new volume and quickly installed Windows 2003 server on it just to be able to make new partitions "a la microsoft"... one can't be to careful.
Then I started to copy the original partitions onto the bigger ones in the new volume.
Yesterday evening I come back at the office, shut down the server and remove the IDE drive. I try to boot...no joy. The server was hanging at "attempting to boot from C". No big deal, I'm thinking, I'll just boot with the windows 2003 server cd and use the recovery console to see what fixboot and fixmbr have to say. But the administrator password was rejected every time (and yes, I had loaded the correct keyboard code). WTF??? I began to sweat buckets and tried continuously to boot this expensive piece of rotten junk......................... . until I made a baaaaaaaaad decision and replaced the new MBR with the old one. Then the Windows recovery console couldn't even find the previous install, and gpart couldn't recreate the partition table (too much inconsistencies, which is strange as the windows install was fresh and unmodified).
I had to replug the IDE drive and start again, this time removing the 2 new HDDs so the copy will go back on a drive with exactly the same geometry as before. This was at 4 am and the copy will last 20 hours
When people began to arrive this morning, I had to announce that the network is mostly down (only the database and mail are running) but they were cool with that. Fortunately for me, this is my first fediddleup since 5.5 years. Nevertheless, I feel too damn dumb for what I did (and retrospectively I can't even understand why I did that).
I've called this morning for some external help because I can't afford to lose everybody's time on this. for A consultant will be there tomorrow to see if we can restart from the IDE restore, or if we have to use the tapes.
Wish me luck....
