June 6, 2006 at 1:44 am
I have a hard disk upgrade (mirrored d drive) coming up for my prod db for which I have 3 hrs green zone to bring the server up.
SQL server is installed in C drive & db is setup on D drive, what I would like to know here is the following plan will work for me.
Will this method work? OR is their any better way of replacing the HDD without OS reinstall?
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Prakash Sawant
http://psawant.blogspot.com
June 6, 2006 at 2:30 am
Prakash
As long as you're not replacing the C drive, and as long as the D drive only holds database files, I can't see any reason to reinstall the operating system.
The method you suggest is good. As a belt-and-braces approach, you may wish to dump the databases to disk before you stop the SQL services. That way, you'll be able to restore the databases in the event that there is any trouble with the database files.
John
June 6, 2006 at 2:52 am
What may also help is to
a) Backup your data as a precaution
b) Power down the machine. Remove the mirrored drives (I assume both are being upgraded since they would want to be the same size).
c) Install your new drives - since both are blank the mirror build should be very quick (ie, no data)
d) Obtain a USB hard drive cage - place one of your old mirrored drives into it (I assume your drives are IDE / SATA)
e) Boot into windows. Transfer the files. Start SQL. Presto!
This is much easier than trying to upgrade the HDD for the OS - in such cases a tool such as Drive Snapshot is great.
As an alternative to the USB caddy, if you can connect one of the old HDDs separately from the RAID controller then do so, boot Windows and transfer the data that way.
June 6, 2006 at 3:28 am
Unfortunately I don’t have any spare slots, I have total 4 of them out of which 2 are used for C Drive & 2 are used for D drive, so in any given case I have to remove both of my HDD to build new mirror.
I can't obtain a USB hard drive cage.
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Prakash Sawant
http://psawant.blogspot.com
June 6, 2006 at 4:28 am
I suppose your DBs are too big to fit onto drive C?
Could you
1. Perform a full backup across the network in the morning.
2. Then, at the beginning of your 3 hour window, perform a transaction log backup.
3. Shutdown, install new drives, format with NTFS, etc
4. Restore full backups
5. Restore log backups
?
This lets you get a lot of the work done outside the three hour window.
June 6, 2006 at 6:22 am
Thank you for your suggestions.
I will let you guys know what steps we exactly followed for HDD up gradation.
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Prakash Sawant
http://psawant.blogspot.com
June 7, 2006 at 5:49 am
If I understand you correctly, you have a mirrored D: drive. You are only replacing the two drives used for D:. If that is the case, after making the appropriate backups, I would do the following:
1. Break the D: mirror.
2. Replace one of the drives with a new drive.
3. Format the new drive, then copy the old drive to the new drive.
4. Remove the second old drive and install the second new drive.
5. Recreate the D: mirror.
June 7, 2006 at 6:34 am
Will my sql server work with out any issue after coping the data back to new drive ?
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Prakash Sawant
http://psawant.blogspot.com
June 7, 2006 at 6:59 am
It should. The way I'm suggesting means that data on your D: drive always available (except while rebooting and shutting the machine off, of course).
If something goes wrong, you can always put the original drives back in.
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