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Upgrading system without losing OS

S

SedoSan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 29, 2012
Messages
145
I'm upgrading my current server and was wondering if I can do the move without losing any data or the OS (Windows 7 Ultimate) settings itself.
Here are the things that are going to change
-> Chassis (Norco RPC4224)
-> Motherboard (X10DRI-O
-> CPU (Xeon E5-2620)
-> RAM (Samsung EEC DDR4 16x2)
-> PSU (800w+800w mini redundant PSU "R4B-800G1V2")

The things that are NOT changing:
-> OS HDD
-> data HDD (8 in RAID6)
-> Raid card (LSI 9261-8i)

Would the OS HDD be confused once I move it or will it work normally on the new system?
I wanted to backup the 8 HDDs first but i'll need 8 more which I don't have the budget for right now so what other options do I have? I also can't backup without getting another raid card to move the data to.
 
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Read up on Sysprep and see if it is available on your OS, you didn't say what OS you were using.
 
With the CPU AND motherboard changing, it's likely that Windows is going to flip its shit.
Sysprepping may work for a transplant, but Windows is going to demand to be re-registered.
 
Chas said:
With the CPU AND motherboard changing, it's likely that Windows is going to flip its shit.
Click to expand...

IME, it won't. Win7 handles body transplants insanely well, the best of any windows so far (haven't tried it with 8+). First new boot into the new body may take an hour. But IME it usually works, if you remove motherboard specific drivers and so on first.
 
SedoSan said:
I'm upgrading my current server and was wondering if I can do the move without losing any data or the OS (Windows 7 Ultimate) settings itself.
Here are the things that are going to change
-> Chassis (Norco RPC4224)
-> Motherboard (X10DRI-O
-> CPU (Xeon E5-2620)
-> RAM (Samsung EEC DDR4 16x2)
-> PSU (800w+800w mini redundant PSU "R4B-800G1V2")

The things that are NOT changing:
-> OS HDD
-> data HDD (8 in RAID6)
-> Raid card (LSI 9261-8i)

Would the OS HDD be confused once I move it or will it work normally on the new system?
I wanted to backup the 8 HDDs first but i'll need 8 more which I don't have the budget for right now so what other options do I have? I also can't backup without getting another raid card to move the data to.
Click to expand...

You don't need more than just 1 disk to back up that raid drive. No need to back up the drives themselves, only the data. Well, unless your data is more than 8 terabytes which is the largest single drive available now.
 
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B00nie said:
You don't need more than just 1 disk to back up that raid drive. No need to back up the drives themselves, only the data. Well, unless your data is more than 8 terabytes which is the largest single drive available now.
Click to expand...

lol, my data is almost 30TB :p
 
Windows 7 doesn't seem to mind major hardware changes.
I've done over a dozen mobo/cu swaps, and windows boots up, finds new hardware and all is good, usually takes 2 reboots and you are up and running again.
All 3 of the rigs in my sigs have have seen 2-3 mobo/cpu swaps since August of 2009 when the OS was originally installed.

having the wrong SATA mode is the only time it won't boot, example, if your old setup was installed as IDE and your new board is default to AHCI, you will blue screen on boot. Just change your mode to IDE and it wll boot up just fine.
 
Zepher said:
Windows 7 doesn't seem to mind major hardware changes.
I've done over a dozen mobo/cu swaps, and windows boots up, finds new hardware and all is good, usually takes 2 reboots and you are up and running again.
All 3 of the rigs in my sigs have have seen 2-3 mobo/cpu swaps since August of 2009 when the OS was originally installed.

having the wrong SATA mode is the only time it won't boot, example, if your old setup was installed as IDE and your new board is default to AHCI, you will blue screen on boot. Just change your mode to IDE and it wll boot up just fine.
Click to expand...

This is my experience as well from testing various new systems I received ranging from pentium haswells to dual [cpu] E5s and 1366, so a spn of many years of hardware, windows worked without a problem. The only issue is when I once tried to boot into a 2 Core system with a home license it simply froze, swapped to win7 pro and all was fine.
 
I believe a similar question was asked two weeks ago. And before that, maybe 4 weeks.

Windows Vista and newer will handle 99.9% of major hardware changes without any major issues.
 
I can’t say with certainty, but my gut feeling is that you should NOT run Sysprep on this system. Sysprep prepares a system for disparate hardware by removing many of the drivers that tie it to the current platform. If the LSI drivers for your array are removed by Sysprep, the resulting environment will not be bootable.

With 30TB of data, there is a large likelihood that the data and the operating system are separate. If they are installed to the same array, you could perform a fresh installation on the operating system partition without affecting your data. If the array is entirely Data with a separate operating system drive run off the motherboard. The environment might be movable to the new motherboard with Sysprep. You will likely need to reinstall the LSI drivers to see the data array after the move.

Brandon
Windows Outreach Team- IT Pro
Windows for IT Pros on TechNet
 
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SedoSan said:
I wanted to backup the 8 HDDs first but i'll need 8 more which I don't have the budget for right now so what other options do I have? I also can't backup without getting another raid card to move the data to.
Click to expand...

Get a solution priced then start budgeting for it. Otherwise you will have a disaster in the future.

What would it cost in time and money to replace your data?
 
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