I have an EX485 with a 500GB system drive and a 1TB second drive. I have folder duplication turned on for the folders that I use (photos, videos, music) I understand that if I wanted to replace the 500GB drive with a larger drive I would need to install the new drive and then use the "System Recovery" disc to re-install the system on the new drive. What is not clear to me is:

1. Would I lose the files in my folders? Or would they be preserved since they are duplicated to the 1TB drive (and then automatically duplicated back to the new drive after the system recovery)?

2. Would I lose my PC Backup database? I think that only exists on the system drive by default?

And if doing this would lose either folders or PC Backups (or both), then I assume that the procedure would be to backup the the folders to an external drive, and use the BDBB add-in to backup the PC backup database. Then restore both after the server is rebuilt?

If you have duplication enabled for all your shared folders, you should be able to perform a Server Recovery without losing any of your data. The Backup Database, however, is not duplicated by default (BDBB does expose a way to enable duplication). There is a chance some or all of your Backup DB is contained on the system drive, and so you may lose some or all of the backups. You could back it up with BDBB and then restore it after the Server Recovery.

A related question would be why are you replacing the system drive? Unless it is having hardware issues, in most cases you are better off adding a new drive as additional drive storage.

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Alex Kuretz
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Thanks for the confirmation and clarification.

As to why I would replace the system disc... Well, I don't really have a good reason... I have another computer that has a small (145GB) hard drive and I need more space on that machine. But I don't need much more. But the price difference between a 500GB drive and a 1TB drive is only a few bucks, so it's hard to convince myself to buy less than a 1TB drive. So I had this crazy thought that maybe I should pull the 500GB system drive from my EX485 and put it in this other computer and put the 1TB drive in the EX485 where the extra space might do more good.