Planning and Upgrading File Systems and Disk Partitions

Often when Windows NT 4.0 Servers where installed without hardware fault-tolerant equipment such as RAID controllers, the Windows NT 4.0 disk manager was used to create volume sets, mirrored sets, stripe sets, and stripe sets with parity. Because the Windows Server 2003 operating system does not support Windows NT 4.0 disk manager configurations, you must modify software-based disk configurations before performing an in-place upgrade of a Windows NT Server to Windows Server 2003. Perform the following tasks for each server that meets this configuration before continuing to upgrade any Windows NT server to Windows Server 2003.

Mirrored Volumes

If Windows NT 4.0 disk administrator was used to create a mirrored set for redundancy prior to upgrading to Windows Server 2003, the Windows NT 4.0 mirrored set must be broken to install Windows Server 2003 successfully.

Perform a Backup of Server Information and Data

Before performing any disk maintenance or disk reconfiguration, perform a backup of server information and data.

Volume Sets, Striped Sets, and Striped Sets with Parity

If you are performing an in-place upgrade of a server that has been configured using Windows NT 4.0 volume sets, stripe sets, or stripe sets with parity, the sets must be deleted and new fault-tolerant drive configurations will need to be configured before an upgrade to Windows Server 2003 can be completed successfully.

Don't Delete All the Data from the Volume

Performing the task of deleting a volume set, stripe set, or stripe set with parity will delete all the data from the volume.

Back up all server data prior to deleting any type of volume or stripe sets.

Because any upgrade from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows Server 2003 using volume sets, stripe sets, or stripe sets with parity requires a reconfiguration of hardware, you should build a new Windows NT 4.0 domain controller, promote this system to the domain's primary domain controller, and conduct the in-place upgrade on the new system.

Manually Synchronize All Domain Controllers in the Domain

When promoting a new Windows NT primary domain controller, it is good practice to manually synchronize all domain controllers in the domain.

Allow enough time for synchronization to occur and validate this by reviewing the domain controller's system event logs.

By adding this new domain controller to the source domain without unsupported volume and stripe set disk configurations, you can conduct the in-place upgrade without being required to take any domain controllers offline during the upgrade.

When the new domain controller is promoted to become a Windows NT 4.0 primary domain controller, the old server will become a backup domain controller and a copy of the Windows NT 4.0 SAM database and its information will remain intact.