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Can I simply swap hard drives?
MrMojoZ:
--- Quote from: Green Giant on September 24, 2007, 05:52:55 pm ---Windows Server OS is the best at recognizing new hardware and new drivers without using the floppy.
And in the few times it wants the floppy, you can just virtually connect a floppy through the network and upload the driver directly without an actual floppy drive.
--- End quote ---
He is talking about controllers that require F6 during the windows install. IE any SATA raid or newer SCSI controller. And once again we are not talking about installing devices while booted into windows, all these problems prevent the OS from loading at all. There is no hardware detection if you blue screen during bootup or if the OS installer can't see a HD.
unclet:
I did not read this whole thread, but wanted to mention that I always have two drives in my cabinets. The first hard drive (C:) is small and is used for the operating system only. The second hard drive (D:) is where all of the emulator stuff is installed. If I ever upgrade to a new computer (I did this twice so far), then I reformat the first hard drive (C:) and install the new operating system. After the computer comes up fine then simply plug in the second hard drive (D:) and the drive is recognized and all emulator stuff exists and is configured already.
acro-ii:
--- Quote from: MrMojoZ on September 25, 2007, 01:44:52 pm ---
--- Quote from: acro-ii on September 25, 2007, 09:25:35 am ---Yes it IS working. I did 2 yesterday, and both went fine.
--- End quote ---
Verify that windows updates can still install.
--- End quote ---
Yes, the ones from yesterday did. One last week did not. It's an easy fix if it does not, I run a nice little utlity called dial-a-fix, and reset all windows update stuff(.dll's and all). Then you're good to go.
Green Giant:
--- Quote from: MrMojoZ on September 25, 2007, 01:58:02 pm ---
--- Quote from: Green Giant on September 24, 2007, 05:52:55 pm ---Windows Server OS is the best at recognizing new hardware and new drivers without using the floppy.
And in the few times it wants the floppy, you can just virtually connect a floppy through the network and upload the driver directly without an actual floppy drive.
--- End quote ---
He is talking about controllers that require F6 during the windows install. IE any SATA raid or newer SCSI controller. And once again we are not talking about installing devices while booted into windows, all these problems prevent the OS from loading at all. There is no hardware detection if you blue screen during bootup or if the OS installer can't see a HD.
--- End quote ---
Yes, I realize you are talking about the harddrive controllers which must be there to see the drive. Like I said above, when this was a problem we just remotely connected a virtual floppy or cdrom, completely outside of any operating system, and dropped in the drivers necessary.
This probably is a problem with crappier servers like Dell and IBM, but with our hardware, we never had issues.
leapinlew:
--- Quote from: Green Giant on September 25, 2007, 05:23:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: MrMojoZ on September 25, 2007, 01:58:02 pm ---
--- Quote from: Green Giant on September 24, 2007, 05:52:55 pm ---Windows Server OS is the best at recognizing new hardware and new drivers without using the floppy.
And in the few times it wants the floppy, you can just virtually connect a floppy through the network and upload the driver directly without an actual floppy drive.
--- End quote ---
He is talking about controllers that require F6 during the windows install. IE any SATA raid or newer SCSI controller. And once again we are not talking about installing devices while booted into windows, all these problems prevent the OS from loading at all. There is no hardware detection if you blue screen during bootup or if the OS installer can't see a HD.
--- End quote ---
Yes, I realize you are talking about the harddrive controllers which must be there to see the drive. Like I said above, when this was a problem we just remotely connected a virtual floppy or cdrom, completely outside of any operating system, and dropped in the drivers necessary.
This probably is a problem with crappier servers like Dell and IBM, but with our hardware, we never had issues.
--- End quote ---
It sounds like your installing the OS using an installer program... like Smartstart. If so, I could see being able to use a virtual floppy, but heres the scenario
You swap the drive from one superior HP server to an equally good HP. The new HP is using an entirely different drive controller and needs to be manually installed during the OS.
There... tell me how you swap drives and make that work. Since you never have issues, I'm curious how this accomplished. The way I see it - you swap the drive and then need to do some software CD Booting magic.