Get ready for disaster - after disaster - Question

[The_Tango]

The disaster was the boot drive on a Windows Server 2008 died. So after completely rebuilding with new drive, I want to never do this again.

I would like to have an image of the existing ready to put on in case this happens again. Is there any free image software that will do this for MS Server?

It isn't a problem if I have to take the drive out & connect to my PC to do the image. This is a file server - no domain.

Thanks

 

[clintb]

Redo Backup, totally free and Linux based, will image MS server products.

 

[PrivateJoker]

Acronis True Image is great, can be run from a CD or USB stick (for both imaging, and restoring to a drive), and has been worth the approx $40ish or so I paid for it a few years ago. It's also quite fast.

I'm sure there are free solutions too.

 

[00Roush]

If you happen to have a Western Digital drive you can use the WD edition of Acronis True Image for free. From my experience this works with any WD drive old, new, directly connected, or USB. I have some old 40GB WD IDE drives in a USB enclosure and was able to use the WD edition of Acronis with it just being connected.

00Roush

 

[coxhaus]

Why not just add another drive and run a mirror. If a drive fails you will be instantly ready to go. Then just swap the failed drive out and the mirror will rebuild. I think it much easier than trying to keep up with multiple images.

PS
Mirrored drives are good protection for drive failure. If you are looking for protection from virus failure etc then backups are your only option.
The backups need to be regular not a one time affair.

 

[The_Tango]

I don't believe that " WD edition of Acronis True Image " supports Server only desktop OS.

Running a mirror seems like a good idea - Not too keen on setting up a software RAID on the MB. All my data drives are on a hardware raid card (LSI & Adaptec). Other problem is the case (Norco) only has one mount for non-slot drive.

 

[stevech]

RAID1 mirror helps with drive failure - but not for file system corruption, fire, theft, or oops deleted that folder in error.

 

[coxhaus]

I don’t know what motherboard you have but the Intel motherboard RAID1 is pretty good. If you have to fit 2 drives in a one slot I have used laptop drives before. My Untangle firewall is running off a laptop drive. It has been running that way four years now. Where there is a will there is a way.

Backups for Server 2008 are not going to be easy like a desktop. Server software is usually expensive. If you don’t run a domain or virtuals, you might take a look at Microsoft Home Server 2011. Home Server 2011 will perform desktop backups and well as server backup. It costs less than $50.00 less than most backup software.

I switched when I retired and have no problems running Home Server. It makes backups so easy. When I switched to Home Server 2011 I used a RAID5 6 drive setup with an Intel RAID card under Server 2008 and it switched perfectly with only the boot partition being reformatted. The data on the other volumes were still in tack after the Home Server install. I boot off my RAID5.

 

[The_Tango]

Short story long:

When the OS drive died, I decided it would be a good time to do a small refresh on that file server. Replaced the old EVGA MB with an Asus P8H77-V, i3 CPU, and upped the memory - reused the LSI 16 port raid card.

Some time back I got a couple of copies of WHS2001 (they were on sale), to give it a try whenever time permitted. Seems like a good time.

I also have two of WD 2.5" 1TB Red drives coming from B&H - which I am going to mount to a Orico PCI25-1S hard drive frame.

Anyway will do a complete backup of ALL data (Movies, Music, Photos, ect.) to my backup server and try WHS. If I like the new OS, will change over the other server over to WHS.

I always knew that Windows Server was overkill for what I was using it for and expect WHS will be a better fit.

 

[stevech]

PS
Mirrored drives are good protection for drive failure. If you are looking for protection from virus failure etc then backups are your only option.
The backups need to be regular not a one time affair.

Mirrored drives, e.g., RAID1-like, are, as in any RAID, just protection from some forms of one drive failing. More likely problems are theft of NAS, NAS power supply/CPU, oops by human in deleting/admin things, and so on.

"RAID is not a backup"