How to migrate data from old WHS to new WHS

[joe_H]

This is just a hypothetical question for now, as I just built a brand new WHS...but I got to thinking what happens to the TB's of data I'm moving over when I decide I want to upgrade the hardware? Can I just move the drives over the new box and re-install WHS?

Just wondered if anyone has run into this issue yet.

 

[RebateMonger]

I'll skip over the part that says that Windows Home Server is "OEM" software and moving it to a new motherboard is contrary to Microsoft's End User License Agreement. The EULA does, however, allow replacement of the motherboard if the original has failed.

You should be able to move all the disks to the new motherboard (being sure that the old "System" disk is listed as the first hard disk in the BIOS boot order). At that point, if you boot to the WHS Install DVD, the WHS installer should see the old WHS installation and allow for a "Reinstallation" of WHS.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd309759(WS.10).aspx

That'll be a complete re-install of WHS on top of the old installation and it will keep all your shared data folders as-is. I don't recall what it does to your client PC backups. If you absolutely don't want to risk losing previous backups, you can back up the client PC backup database to another disk(s). There are complete instructions for this available. I've done it a couple of times without incident.

You can find complete instructions for these operations in the Microsoft WHS whitepapers and on http://wegotserved.com.

 

[joe_H]

Thanks for the response. I really wasn't thinking about circumnavigating the EULA (another copy of WHS could be purchased, Vail could be installed...etc). I was just more concerned if one would have to migrate all of the pooled data to another location and then migrate it back to a new box or not. Good to see that a OS re-install should work.

 

[RebateMonger]

At this time, it appears that a migration from WHS v1 to WHS v2 (Vail) might require backup/restore of the old WHS shared folders. But it's kinda' early to know because MS says that Vail and its storage system are in active development.

 

[Homerboy]

I have done this migration in the past... and this is how I did it:

#0 remove all HDDs from old WHS
#1 Get a new C: drive.
#2 Install WHS on new machine with JUST that new C installed
#3 plug in 1 of the old HDDs... DO NOT ADD TO POOL (yet)
#4 copy over files to new install of WHS
#5 when copying is complete, then add that drive to the pool
#6 goto #3 until all old data is copied over and all old HDDs are added to the pool

I did it this way (twice) as quite honestly I didn't want to trust WHS install to do the "reinstallation" properly, recognize all the old tombsotnes etc etc.