I've got a bit of a dilema. My NT boot HD has run out of space. I want to install a larger 4GB drive to replace the 2GB currently installed. I have 3 drives and a CD ROM installed, so there is no space to add another drive and want to keep the OS separate anyway. I really don't wish to re-install the server and all the updates again (very time consuming). I'm hoping I can find a way to install the sys boot on the drive, then copy the file system to the new drive and wind up back at SP6a with all servers and services in tact. Formatting and Copying the file structure is less of a problem if I can create, or find, a bootable NT system on diskette and a version of format that will support NTFS and allow me to create a bootable hard drive.
Can anyone give me some guidance, I'm not ready to upgrade my server to a later version and would probably not be able to migrate my current setting since the install would be on a different HD.
Has anyone done this and give me some guidance. It would be greatly appreciated
Tom

The hard drive manufacturer may have a utility that will let you clone the current 2GB drive to the 4GB one (you'd need both drives connected and a floppy) - most have nowadays.

FYI NT Operating Systems do not use and
never have used Boot Disks. They come with
the facility to create a Setup Diskette Set
which is used to access the REPAIR
functions in NT Line Command.

Emergency Boot Disks (EBD) are machine
specific.

You need software like True Image from
www.acronis.com, which is a total
clone/backup software solution.

SYSing the hard drive is a DOS funtion and
never ever has there been or will be MSDOS
in NT except under NT Virtual Machine,
though if you are a Server Administrator
you should be aware of this.....

Steve, Yes, it's a Maxtor drive which did come with some software, but, I'll be darned if I could get it to work. I'm going to go back and take another look at that.

Roger, I guess I was just dreaming, and Yes I was hoping that somewhere out in the ether there would be a magic bullet. My network is a small home business (3 workstations and a server) which is why I'm hesitant to spend the bucks to upgrade. Though, technically, I am the administrator, it's by default, and I'm learning some things the hard way.

In general, cloning is exactly what I want to do, but, run into "sharing violations" because I'm using some of the files I need to copy. I will take a look at True Image as that may well be the best approach.

Thanks to you both for taking a moment to share your thoughts and give me your ideas.
It's much appreciated.
Tom

Tom - if its a maxtor, then just download the maxblast software (if you haven't already) and use it to create a bootable floppy. With just the 'old' 2GB and 'new' 4GB drives connected (so as not to confuse matters), boot from the maxblast floppy - it should be straightforward to use.

One thing - after its complete, set the machine up as it was - but with the 'new' drive' in place of old & then boot (should lok the same. Don't boot with 'old' & 'new' drives in the machine after cloning - can mess up drive letters.

Alternative approach if you have another machine (NT/2k/XP). Connect the 2 & 4GB drives and just use the host operating system to copy everything from one to the other (no files in use - as not booting from them) - just make sure you've set options to view all hidden and system files before you start.

Steve, You know I saw the option to create a diskette (I even created it) but never tried it as A diskette and CD (Maxblast and Maxblast II) were packaged with the hardrive. The new drive is, actually, a 20Gb on which I partitioned a 4 Gb partition with NT4. My server is predominantly a file and printer sharing server for our inventory and financial data although I do have a website, WINS, DNS and ILS services running. Anyway, the problem I was having with the CD and diskette that were provided with the drive was that after it formatted, it seemed create a different version of NTFS on the HD which was not recognized when it tried to copy/clone. Needless to say, the result wasn't bootable. Does any of this make any sense to you? I'm not aware of different versions of NTFS though I haven't done any research on that.
I, really, am appreciating your help.
I'll post back with my results if you wish. I'll give it another go this weekend when I can take the server down and not impact operations.
Thanks again.
Tom

Steve, I couldn't get the Maxtor HD utility(s) to image the NT HD correctly. I ran into myriad of different problems depending on how I tried to do that. I gave up on that approach and turned to the disk imaging alternative. Remember the PC is dual boot, Win 98 (c:) and NT4 (d:). I connected the new drive to NT first, formatted it NTFS to prepare it to accept the NT system. From NT, I used XCOPY to recreate the directory structure and copy the NT files to the new drive. Some files didn't copy because of share violations.
I then booted to Win98 and installed an NTFS driver. Using the NTFS driver, I was able to copy the files I wasn't able to copy under NT to the new drive. I physically reconfigured the HDs (removed the orig D: NT drive and installed the new drive as the D: drive. I got a bootable NT drive, however, User accounts were gone and some services (SNMP, MDTC) do not start. Re-establishing the User Accounts was tedious, but, went without mishap. I'm in the process of analysing the EventIDs for the failing services now.
I can't figure out why those accounts and services didn't migrate cleanly. Have you any ideas? The C: drive is unchanged, D: is identical to the original (except it's larger).