I've been trying to figure out the easiest way to move my WHS server software & data to a new machine.I'd like to use the same drives on the new server. I can't seem to find a way to do this without extra drives. If I missed it, please point me to the place to look (and forgive the WHS newbie for asking a question already answered.)

I am wondering whether there is in the WHS itself a way to sw1do something as simple as moving the existing disk drives to a new server and flipping the power switch. My current disk arrangement is two 500Gb SATA drives and an ATA drive for the system itself. And a separate external drive for backup. (I wouldn't mind losing the ATA drive in the upgrade, but I'm looking for simple.)

If I can't just move the drives could I do something like a "full metal restore"; a fresh install of WHS on the new machine and then restore from the backup. This might avoid driver issues, The steps might be:
1. Install WHS on dedicated system disk on new machine.
2. move the drives from the old machine to the new.
3. Add a new 1Gb drive to the new machine.
4. Restore everything else from the BDBB drive.

Doing things this way might also allow you to use the old server name since the two machines are never on-line together.

Does any of this make sense?

BDBB can be used to move you client data to your new server. Can I ask you what you were using for a server before and what the new server is? Alex the creator of BDBB actually moved the drives from one server and EX47x to an EX49x and performed a server recovery. Now he was much braver then I was in doing this. I chose to copy my data between the two servers and then move the drives as I freed up the storage space on the older server. The only thing I didn't do was move the client data which I could of with BDBB because I chose to let the older clients continue to use the original server to be used for backups and some misc other things thus providing me with ample capacity to back up more clients both mine and those I work on for others.

Anyway this is what Alex wrote about migrating his drives from one server to another as mentioned above just click on the link below:
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/01 ... me-server/

Please review the article carefully to see if this may be of interest to you. Also if you do not have your data backed up then now is the time to back up what is most important to you. While you data is safe on your server is something bad were to happen to it say a flood or fire then your data would be lost if you do not have it backed up. This is just good practice for all to follow.

As for BDBB its a wonderful Add-In and I am happy to see you are using it. I use an external drive for my BDBB backups so I can keep them in a safe location if I desire. I also copy the BDBB Backups from one server to be archived on another as a redundant backup. Where it really shines is when something goes totally wrong with your Client Data and BDBB restores that client data very well. I have used it once in the past and it saved me big time because some of the clients have in backup are not on site so to lose those backups would be a nightmare. That client is so important it has its running drive and I have made 2 other copies of the drive one is with the client and the other is here but even with that level of protection BDBB is my first line of defense.

The point here is Backups are important and while the server is a great tool for Backups it should not be your only tool.

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Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

In addition to the Manual Migration article that comp1962 linked above, I have a guide on using Server Recovery to migrate, and Damian has posted his experience with this.

http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2009/08 ... -hardware/
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2009/09 ... me-server/

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Alex Kuretz
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