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Upgrading your RAID controller ?


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I'm not having any luck with searching up on this topic, so lets see !

My ultimate goal is to be able to image a server that is on old hardware, and then restore that image into newer hardware. It seems that we want to avoid using sysprep, as I believe Microsoft does not support machines that have been sysprep'd after playing a production role.

And I know Acronis offers this feature as an add on to the latest line of 9.1 True Image Server software, but we are trying to avoid paying for that feature (not too price friendly !).

So I'm taking this one step at a time. Let's say I'm using an older server, and he has an HP5x series RAID controller, and I want to upgrade that RAID controller up to a more current 6402. How can I install/have the new drivers present so that the machine will even boot up after placing the new card in ?

I have a Bart PE disk created that I'm able to boot into and access the drives of my server if need be.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, this is for 2000 and 2003 servers (not R2).

Thanks !

Edited by stickzilla
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No specific role - we have a lot of various kinds of servers...over 200. Just at a generic level I'm trying to see if this is possible.

If it really matters, think of my first test servers as being just an install of 2k3 and nothin else.

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It might be possible but very hard to do.

The following steps might help you to test if this is working or not ( i never tried this):

- ghost your os on you old hardware

- Install a new 2000 or 2003 with the new hardware.

- export entire HKLM\system of the new system and save %systemroot%\system32\drivers

- restore the old OS on the old hardware

- modify your old computer drivers :

- copy drivers for the new scsi card in %systemroot%\system32\drivers

- add the new drivers entry in the registry in HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\services and remove the old drivers entry

- replace the old os registry branches directly (if possible if not from a PE CD) HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\Class, HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\codeviceinstallers, HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\criticaldevicedatabase and HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\control\deviceclasses. (note from a PE CD editing registry will be more complex: you need to load the system hive located in %systemroot%\system32\config on the old os hard drive, then to know which controlset is the current look in HKLM\remotesys\select the "current" value is the current value of the controlset. etc)

- replace from a PE CD the registry branch HKLM\remotesys\mounteddevices

- Now ghost again your system

- set up your new controller and raid

- put your ghost image on this new raid

- pray a lot and this should work perhaps only in safe mode at first.

Good luck and tell if you got it working or not.

Edited by allen2
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This may help you for one part of your puzzle. Install the RAID card and hang a couple of spare drives on it. Boot up and install the drivers. Power down, uninstall the spares and switch over the cables for the real drives onto the new RAID card. Pull the old RAID card out. Power on and cross your fingers. :-)

I have no idea if this will work or not, but it is the only thing that comes to mind.

Good luck!

-John

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  • 9 months later...

I've actually got this procedure working, and I have edited and updated the tool I found to work with the P400 SAS controllers that come with HP G5 ML370s.

If anybody is interested in me posting a guide for injecting drivers, I'll gladly do it.

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You may not be able to do that. Your best bet maybe install the controller and then do a repair install, what roll is this server playing?

The repair is the only way in my opinion, unless it uses the same driver files or is "supported" by the OS and even then, you may still have to repair install it. I have used 4 diff RAID controllers and know the steps by heart, lol. Hope that helps. :thumbup

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If you have the proper registry keys prepared you can inject them into the registry and copy the .inf and .sys as well to the machine via booting up into Bart PE, and the machine will then boot up on its own

After you first boot up I personally recommend then manually reinstalling the drivers while actually in win2k3 (ive done this in 2000 also)

This is meant for migrating a machine that may be too complicated to rebuild (or your guys are just lazy!) to completely new hardware.

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One thing to be careful of is that various RAID controller manufacturers often do not use the same methods for creating/managing/reading RAID arrays. For instance, a RAID array created on an LSI based RAID controller will more than likely not transfer successfully to an Adaptec based RAID controller.

Provided you get Windows to accept the drivers (either by installing the RAID controller in an open PCI/PCI-X/PCIe slot or injecting them using your preferred method) you can create an image of the drives you want to migrate (Ghost or any other method). Then you recreate the array on the new controller and restore the image.

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