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Restoring Windows 2003

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2014-05-14
2014-05-17
  • ChrisBedford

    ChrisBedford - 2014-05-14

    Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong, or how to go about finding where the problem is...

    I have a 2003 (32 bit, Web Edition) server that is running out of space on its C: drive, and I desperately need to upgrade. However, due to loss of developer support, I can't just reinstall on a bigger hard drive - there is a homegrown application there that I couldn't get to run when I tried installing and restoring its data. Nothing like Open Source software eh... ;-) [It's MySQL based].

    Just teasing. Anyway - the system disk is a 10 GB partition on a 160 GB drive. D: is the remainder of the disk. Both partitions are mirrored using Windows' disk manager to another 160 GB drive. I broke the mirror and took one drive back to the workshop where I am experimenting with similar hardware (earlier generation of the same server). Windows boots and runs, albeit warning me that the hardware has changed radically and I need to re-register Windows within 3 days). Now I am trying to work out a strategy for increasing the size of the system partition without losing either partiton as currently seen by Windows.

    (1) doing a disk-disk clone onto a bigger disk gives me a system that boots to the Windows opening screen, then blue-screens so fast I can't read the error message
    (2) doing a partition-image clone and then image-partition recovery gives me "missing operating system". After using GPartEd to add a "bootable" flag to the partition it boots to a flashing text cursor on a black screen.

    I've successfully cloned at least a handful of Windows XP machines in the past, maybe a Win7 or two, but now 2003 has me stymied. I'm out of ideas. Any suggested strategy / workaround / troubleshooting methods? Any help gratefully accepted...

     
  • ChrisBedford

    ChrisBedford - 2014-05-14

    ...Oh. Seems I am on a hiding to nothing here.

    I decided to experiment with cloning using the Windows mirror, and

    (a) GPartEd can't resize a Windows Dynamic partition and Windows won't revert it to a basic partition

    (b) nor can Windows resize, even if it's not mirrored any more: "The selected volume is a system or boot disk or was created on a basic disk in a previous version of Windows and cannot be extended"

    Bugger.

     
  • Steven Shiau

    Steven Shiau - 2014-05-17

    "Windows Dynamic partition" is not supported on GNU/Linux AFAIK. Therefore I believe Clonezilla can not handle that.

    Steven.

     

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