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Two WHS questions...cloning system drive and backing up

T

TheWart

Diamond Member
Hey all, I recently got the Intel SS4200E thanks to the Hot Deals forum, and I then purchased WHS. I managed to get the unattended USB stick install to work, and my current setup is:

1xWD EADS 1.5TB drive with WHS system files and ~900GB of my own files
1xSamsung 1.5TB drive that I am just using for "folder duplication" for the files on the WD

I have 2 questions. The first is whether or not there is a way to clone the WD that has the WHS system files onto an external drive in a USB enclosure. This way, if WHS dies or something, I can just pop in the cloned drive and be good to go. Doing WHS' recovery system is a no-go cause I don't have any video out or CD drive on the SS4200E.

My second question is, assuming the answer to the above is "no," then could I do this as an alternate in the event my main WHS drive fails: 1)take out both drives 2)put in new drive 3)install WHS 4)put my samsung drive (that had all my personal files duplicated through WHS) into an external USB drive and just drag my personal files over to my new WHS disk...will that work?

oh yeah, one last thing. What is the "Backup Disk Option" in WHS when you throw in a new HD. I assumed that was for folder duplication, but I wasnt able to duplicate any folders until I added my second disk as a storage pool disk, not a backup disk...if not for folder duplication, what is the backup disk option used for?

thanks for any clarification of this!
 
I haven't read extensively on the Intel SS4200E, but it does seem that rebuilding a WHS server on that box is a problem unless you want to invest some money in a video display for it.

The "easy" answer is probably to just keep backups of your shared folders. If WHS fails, re-install the WHS server and copy the backed-up files into the new WHS. Doing this doesn't take any more disk space than full folder duplication of your WHS and has the advantage of protecting against accidental file deletion, viruses, and a major power surge to your WHS server.

Hopefully a good solution for a server re-installation or recovery of the Intel box will be worked out soon.
 
You could probably take the HD out of the WHS box, clone it on your main pc and keep a backup image of the WHS install on your pc as a backup.

I wish I would have done this. i ahve the same setup, I upgraded my NIC drivers to hopefully get better speeds, however I wasn't thinking and upon upgrading it disabled/created a non working Network install. No more remote access and I can't get into the box! Had to copy over everything and format to reinstall. Too expensive to add video to this box. I have 4 1.5tb drives in there and am having to copy all 4TB of space back over, hours and hours!
 
The parttion part of WHS can not be ghosted and reused because it uses a HD GUID number that is not recorded by ghosting programs.

How,ever reinstalling the OS partition takes just a little more than Ghosting, and does not disturb the data partitions.

Important data file (not OS related) you can sync. to any external drive since they are stored in regular format.
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Last edited:
JackMDS said:
The parttion part of WHS can not be ghosted and reused because it uses a HD GUID number that is not recorded by ghosting programs.

How,ever reinstalling the OS partition takes just a little more than Ghosting, and does not disturb the data partitions.

Important data file (not OS related) you can sync. to any external drive since they are stored in regular format.
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Click to expand...

Now just so I am 100% clear. For convenience's sake, I can have the same result by just enabling folder duplication and then if/when I need to reinstall WHS merely throw the HD I was using for folder duplication in an external drive and then copy my files over to my new WHS install, right? The files that are created by folder duplication are not specifically "tied" to my current install of WHS, right? Like I can even take the disk that the dupes are going on and stick it in some Windows rig and it will just read it like an NTFS drive, correct?
 
Yap, that is correct, you can do what you mentioned above.

However in order Not to disturb the WHS do it when the system is Off, and do Not switch the WHS On for the duration that the second hard drive is Not in.

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