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Bertrand SCHITS
Asked: 2012-05-23 18:47:13 +0800 CST

Moving Windows 2003 boot+system partition

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I have a Windows 2003 server with:
- C: (15 Gb boot+system) on an old PATA disk
- G: (20 Gb empty) on a SCSI hardware RAID
- H: (220 Gb datas) on the same SCSI RAID

I want to move C: to the RAID. I plan to use the 20 Gb empty partition. So I will remove the PATA drive.

I plan to do this:
- activate the G: partition, so the RAID bootsector will point to it
- reboot the server with CloneZilla or whatever and copy C: to G:
- if necessary modify boot.ini to point to the correct disk
- remove the PATA drive
- reboot the server
- in case of failure, I just have to re-plug the PATA drive, erase G: (to be sure) and reboot

Will this work ?
I'm afraid about the G: will remain G: instead of been transformed to C:
And maybe I forgot other things.

windows-server-2003 partition boot legacy

3 Answers

  1. Sounds like a plan, yes. But you should add a step "Make a full backup of the server" to the list.

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  2. That should work. Maybe you'll need to set the RAID as the boot disk in the BIOS. As for the drive letter change: if that happens, there is a fix described in this Microsoft KB.

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  3. Best Answer

    With my little experience in this domain, I can say this will nearly only depend the way your system see the disk order.

    If your current PATA drive is seen as first disk by the BIOS, then once you remove it if your BIOS see the RAID as first disk, you're ok. The BIOS order is generally the same as Windows order. So if you don't have any other drive, you won't have problem.
    If, later, you wan to add a PATA drive, you'll have to find a way to tell the BIOS to see it as second drive. Most BIOSes don't allow this.

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