Transferring the system to a new disk
Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2005
43
Chapter 7.
Transferring the system to a new
disk
7.1 General
information
Sooner or later any server user finds out that his hard disk is too small. If you just
don’t have space for more data, you can add another disk just for data storage as
described in the following chapter.
However, you might find that your hard disk does not have enough space for the
operating system and installed applications, preventing you from updating your
software. In this case, you have to transfer the system to a higher-capacity hard
disk.
To transfer your system to a new disk, you must first install in into the server.
If a server doesn’t have a bay for another hard disk, you can temporarily install it in place of
your CD-ROM. If it’s still impossible, you can clone a hard disk by creating its image and
restoring it to a new hard disk with larger partitions.
There are two transfer modes available: automatic and manual.
In the automatic mode, you will only have to take several simple actions to transfer
all the data, including partitions, folders and files, to a newer disk, making it
bootable if the original disk was bootable.
There will be only one difference between these disks – partitions on the newer disk
will be larger. Everything else, including the installed operating systems, data, disk
labels, settings, software and everything else on the disk will remain the same.
Of course, this is the only result available in the automatic mode. The program can only
duplicate the older disk layout to the new one. To obtain different result, you will have to
answer additional questions about cloning parameters.
The manual mode will provide more data transfer flexibility.
1. You will be able to select the method of partitions and data transfer:
•
As is;
•
New disk space is proportionally distributed between the old disk partitions;
•
New disk space is distributed manually.
2. You will also be able to select operations to perform on the old disk:
•
Leave partitions (and data!) on the old disk;
•
Remove all information from the old disk;