# Migrating from SBS 2003



## paulr24 (Mar 24, 2007)

At work we recently had a hard drive fail on a RAID1 configuration on an SBS 2003 server. We got a replacement HDD from Dell and popped it in, but it failed to rebuild due to the original HDD having some bad blocks. It went into predictive failure, and the Dell tech that I spoke with told me that we would need to rebuild from scratch. He said we can't just restore a backup to a new HDD because the new HDD would likely go into predictive fail as well.

I was thinking that we could potentially upgrade to new hardware and SBS 2011 and migrate everything over, but my boss didn't want to spring for a new server right now. What I'm wondering now is what would be the easiest way to perform this rebuild and get all settings, etc that are currently on this server back afterward? Or would it be simplest method be to migrate to a virtual machine, put SBS 2011 on the same hardware SBS 2003 was originally on, and migrate from the virtual machine to SBS 2011?

Thanks in advance!


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Why would the old data not repopulate a new driver? If the new drive is clean and free from defects restoring the data to it would not be an issue. Was this a software or hardware RAID 1 you had set up?


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## paulr24 (Mar 24, 2007)

Thanks for the quick response Rockn! It is hardware RAID1. Here is how it was all explained to me by a Dell tech, if that helps:

"Well that's why it failed the rebuild, it's in predictive failure."
"We have a double fault here."
"See how it keeps reporting issues on pd 0:0;1?"
"That means it's trying to copy bad blocks to the mirror drive, which caused enough bad block flags to cause the drive to go predictive failure."
"Let me see what I can dig up, see if there's any way to recover besides rebuilding from scratch."
"Well a bit of bad news."
"I can replace that pred fail drive, no big issue."
"The problem here lies in the fact that you won't be able to rebuild this raid 1, as it will cause even the new drive to go pred fail/fail the rebuild."
"Which means all I can recommend per dell policy is a full from the ground up rebuild. Can't even use your backup as it will cause another logical issue, another double fault."

Me: "So we would need to set this server back up again from scratch?"

"Pretty much."
"Not a fan of having to say it, but if you try to restore from backup you hose two good drives."
"It has a very high chance of recreating the double fault and we're right back here except you'll be out of warranty by then."

Me: "Is trying to recover the bad blocks an option? (I understand that it may not be one that you recommend per Dell policy)."

"No, checkdisk won't fix the logical issue. See bad blocks are primarly a harware issue, but the next step up is logical, a.k.a how the controller handles the data."
"So it takes those "hardware" issues and decides it needs to quickly mirror them to the next drive, and in the process causes it to fail or go pred fail."
"It's a controller thing, specifically a virtual disk thing."


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## Rockn (Jul 29, 2001)

Yea that is a tough one. Putting corrupt or possibly corrupt data back on a server would be a sticky situation. Do you have any archival type of data that was stored off site to mitigate some of the data loss?


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