Moving Microsoft Server 2003/Exchange 2003 to a new drive

Does anybody have directions/advice on how to copy a drive holding MS Exchange 2003 running on Server 2003 onto a new drive? Would it be as simple as imaging the entire current drive onto the new one ?

What I am dealing with is a single Exchange 2003 server running Microsoft Server 2003. It has two drives, one of which is quickly running out of drive space (this is the system disk holding the OS and program files). I have moved all of the files I can off of this drive to free up room so my only alternative, that I can think of, is to replace the current drive with a new larger one.

The question is can I image the entire current system drive onto the new drive and expect things to run smoothly.

TIA.

Rather than attempting to move the entire Exchange 2003 installation to a different drive, have you thought about moving the Exchange transactions log files and database files to the new drive? Its a lot easier to move the Logs and database to a new directory.

The logs and database files can grow quickly; you should check those dirrectories first.


Here is an article on moving the Exchange Logs and database directory to a new drive.

Exchange 2003

We're not running out of room for the exchange data. We have plenty of drive space for the mailbox stores on a separate drive installed on the server.

The problem is that we are running out of room on the c-drive system disk that holds the OS and exchange installation due to updates that have exceeded capacity.

Ive moved off pretty much all I can from the C=Drive to the D-Drive, the transaction logs and mail database are already on the disk with additional space

I know this is a place for NP's and money is tough to come by but for $200 you can get a kit to help you through this. It is very easy...
http://www.sbsmigration.com/pages/13/

Is this a Windows 2003 SBS server? We should establish whether or not your are running the SBS version of Windows server 2003 before you try to swing migrate it. If you are using SBS, then the solution may actually be to move lots of other data folders off the drive instead of the Exchange sys files. Consult this Microsoft link for a whitepaper if that is the case Moving SBS Data. How big is the system drive in the first place? Perhaps you have a bunch of left over debug files, temp files, orphaned printer jobs, internet log files, etc.

I'd actually look into Acronis Disk Director Server for an "easy" fix. It works with RAID setups and can edit partition sizes. If you'd prefer a more "do-it-yourself" approach, I'd check these:
[ulist]Virtual Memory, check the location of the pagefile. Move it off drive C to drive D. (I know the link is for XP, but its in the same place for Windows 2003) Set the initial and maximum sizes to be the same, 4096 (or 4095, can't recall what the actual maximum is). That way it won't fluctuate in size.[/*]Make sure there isn't a hibernate file on the C: drive.[/*]Try clearing the Internet Explorer cache, including "offline files". Change the cache size to something like 50MB instead of the default.[/*]Check for log files from other software and see if you can configure them to write to drive D:, then move the existing logs there.[/*]You do not need to keep the unpacked service pack installation folders on drive C:. You can move them anywhere you like. I'd suggest if you really feel you need them on-hand, burn them to a CD.[/*]Try Windows Cleanup - use at your own risk. There is a demo mode that will show you how much space it will clean up and you can browse to see what it will delete. Use the demo mode first before running to make sure you aren't going to wipe anything important. If you think something there is important, then reconfigure and rerun demo.[/*][/ulist]There are many more things you can do, but without seeing it first hand I have little more to offer than this.

Of course you can image the dirve and restore on the large drive, but to migrate to another one, I think clone the drive is faster, after that you can use the targe drive immediately, easeus partition master is a good tool, you can resize the targe partition to fit for the partition size when you copy, very convenient. http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/disk-copy.htm

I like the price better than Acronis for a nice GUI partition manager that supports hardware RAID.  Nice tip!