I am having a Windows Home Server (WHS) in which my main system hard drive started to fail. Since it was still somewhat readable I figured I’ll copy everything to a new, larger hard drive. I wanted to re-install the system anyway because it started to be a bit flaky (probably the hard drive dying), but I didn’t want to loose all the computer backups which I had saved (multiple revisions and a few computers I had backed up for keeping just in case).
So I transferred the partitions from my old 250GB IDE drive onto the new 2TB SATA drive (making sure the old C:\ stayed at 20GB and only the new D:\ partition was enlarged – very important!), inserted the WHS install disc and started the re-install…until I came to the point where it should allow me to choose between a New Installation and a ReInstall – but it only offered me a New Install. So I started searching and thinking…
Why doesn’t it show up? I searched long and hard, but couldn’t find anything.
I came across instructions on how to clone the disk ID of the hard drives to upgrade the system drive, but I wanted to do a re-install anyway, so I skipped that one.
I found instructions on how to procede if you can’t do a reinstall when the first try failed – getting closer, but I wanted to keep the backup database.
So I tried to think – what could it check for to offer the reinstall? What was different to previous reinstalls I did onto the same 250GB drive?
I checked the boot order in the BIOS, and it was set for the new drive. That wasn’t the issue. It wasn’t on SATA port 1, so I made sure that it was plugged into the first SATA port and tried again – unsuccessfully. While doing that I thought – how can it know what drive to install on since it doesn’t ask me – it can’t read the boot-order from the BIOS…thinking… it probably tried to install onto the remaining IDE drive I had in the system.
So I unplugged my IDE drive, made sure that the new system drive was the first SATA drive, checked that I had a fairly recent backup of the server data handy just in case that the process will kill all data I had, connected an external DVD drive to the system, set the BIOS to boot from the internal DVD first, put a CD in the internal drive I knew that would wait for me to make a selection on boot and booted the WHS installer from the external DVD drive.
And there it was – my re-install option 🙂
So I started the re-install and went for coffee. When I came back my computer was waiting at the boot screen of the internal CD. I removed the CD in the internal drive, shut the system down, reconnected the IDE drive, made sure the boot drive was still the correct SATA drive in the BIOS and booted.
WHS went then into its text mode install and I thought – should I have waited for the text-part to be over and reconnected at the next reboot? Too late.
It did its work in the text part and then rebooted for the final GUI. It did its thing and took reassuringly long in the finalizing install step (I let it run overnight).
Once it was done and the password was entered and logged off and on again – there it was – all my data and the backups.
Could something have gone wrong? Yes – everything could have been deleted and the server burst into flames. But it worked 🙂
If you try it – your mileage may vary, but that’s what it was for me. If you try to re-install after a cloning of the drive and the re-install option doesn’t show – it seems that WHS first searches for IDE drives and then for SATA drives in the port order in the quest to find the install hard drive.
While with a nice BIOS you can change the boot order and WHS, once it runs, doesn’t care which drive is at which port, it does matter when you do an install.
Again – use this information at your own risk. I did it only on one system and it worked for me, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be working for everyone all the time.
Mark Krieger helps organizations and individuals to create systems for success, both on the IT and operations side and implement strategies for financial well-being. www.makbiz.ca