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One of the things I thought WHS would be useful for was not only restoring a system disk when it fails, but also restoring a system disk when you just want to change the hard disk size. Well, turns out you can do that...but only one way.
One of the PCs I backed up had an 80 GB drive, but was only using 23 GB on it. I had a spare 40GB disk laying around, so I figured I'd power down the PC, remove the 80 drive, put in the 40 drive, and then restore the backup onto that drive. Should work, right, since it's only trying to put 23GB onto a 40 drive.
Wellllll...not exactly. Google searches confirm that you can only restore to a hard drive equal or larger than the one you had. Sounds like Microsoft was in collusion with hard drive makers when they made WHS....
I'll give kudos though that the restore process was painless, at least as far as I could go. It booted up, found WHS, and gave me intuitive choices for the backup. It only balked when it got to actually restoring, since the drive was "too small" for the backup.
I'm not complaining, really...I'd rather WHS did awesome at backing up and restoring system drives, than have this relatively obscure capability of restoring to a smaller drive than what was backed up. And I'm sure the drive size must play some part in how it backs up and restores...I'm sure it's not just saving off files, but probably HD tables too.
Anyway, I'm convinced enough. I ordered WHS, and also a 500GB external/USB drive. It was the cheapest and most flexible way to add more storage to the older PC, since the external drive is USB/eSATA. I also bought an adapter so I could re-use the other 500 GB SATA drive I have (from my previous external drive). I've heard that external drives fail more often as they're not meant to be kept on all the time....I find that a little hard to believe, as when I removed the 500GB drive from the previous external casing I had (when it failed, incidentally...) I found a normal drive in there. So I think a drive is a drive is a drive. Although perhaps it's an issue of cooling. Ill have to make sure the drives keep cool down there.
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One of the PCs I backed up had an 80 GB drive, but was only using 23 GB on it. I had a spare 40GB disk laying around, so I figured I'd power down the PC, remove the 80 drive, put in the 40 drive, and then restore the backup onto that drive. Should work, right, since it's only trying to put 23GB onto a 40 drive.
Wellllll...not exactly. Google searches confirm that you can only restore to a hard drive equal or larger than the one you had. Sounds like Microsoft was in collusion with hard drive makers when they made WHS....
I'll give kudos though that the restore process was painless, at least as far as I could go. It booted up, found WHS, and gave me intuitive choices for the backup. It only balked when it got to actually restoring, since the drive was "too small" for the backup.
I'm not complaining, really...I'd rather WHS did awesome at backing up and restoring system drives, than have this relatively obscure capability of restoring to a smaller drive than what was backed up. And I'm sure the drive size must play some part in how it backs up and restores...I'm sure it's not just saving off files, but probably HD tables too.
Anyway, I'm convinced enough. I ordered WHS, and also a 500GB external/USB drive. It was the cheapest and most flexible way to add more storage to the older PC, since the external drive is USB/eSATA. I also bought an adapter so I could re-use the other 500 GB SATA drive I have (from my previous external drive). I've heard that external drives fail more often as they're not meant to be kept on all the time....I find that a little hard to believe, as when I removed the 500GB drive from the previous external casing I had (when it failed, incidentally...) I found a normal drive in there. So I think a drive is a drive is a drive. Although perhaps it's an issue of cooling. Ill have to make sure the drives keep cool down there.
This thread is not open. If you wish to respond, please respond using the original blog entry link. View the original blog entry
