Cloning Windows Server 2003R2 System Disk

I have a situation that requires to clone a system disk on a Windows SBS 2003 system since the C: drive is running out of space. The issue is that the SBS server is down to about 1.5MB of free disk space (don’t ask how that happened…it’s not pretty) and, while the physical disk is 80GB in overall size, the system partition is only 10GB overall. The only real solution is to clone the system partition to a new disk, then boot the machine with the new disk as a slave and use diskpart to extend the partition. Then, after that’s done, change the jumpers on the two drives so that the new clone is the master drive and the original becomes the slave and boot the machine off the new clone drive. Simple.

I ended up choosing to use Clonezilla since it appeared to be more mature than g4u (whether this is true or not I cannot say for sure…nevertheless, they both appear to do the job). I found it by searching for “open source disk clone” and stumbled across the OSALT site. After downloading the ISO I went into my VM lab (a HP DL380 G3 running VMWare ESXi 3.5) and created a new VM consisting of the same hardware as the source except for a 25GB disk versus a 10GB disk.

I then attached the new 25GB disk to the source system (my Windows Server 2003R2 domain controller for the lab), started the VM, attached the ISO via the VMWare Infrastructure client and booted off the ISO/CD. After about 5 minutes Clonezilla came up and I setup the cloning process — all in all about 10 minutes worth of work at most. I then fired up the cloning process and after an additional 45 minutes the clone was done. The clone was still 10GB large as I didn’t explore whether Clonezilla could resize the partition on the fly while it was cloning it. No big deal…it’s easy to extend the partition under Windows if you have the space on your drive. I rebooted into the Windows OS (with the clone disk still attached) and I resized the partition using diskpart. Once that was completed I shutdown the VM, detached the cloned disk from the source and booted the new VM. After a complaint from Windows Product Activation that the system hardware had substantially changed and having to go through the reactivation process again I had a domain controller with more than double the disk space of the original system.

The next step is to do this to the SBS system.

Whither Common Sense?

Now that the Goldstone Commission has released their report on alleged war crimes by Israel (note: the U.N. Human Rights Council’s original mandate on this was to investigate Israel’s conduct of the war and not Hamas’ or the Palestinians…wonder why?) during the recent Gaza offensive, Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak has finally responded with an excellentopinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Where has common sense gone to in this day and age? Israel suffers for 8 years the ceaseless rocket attacks (aimed specifically at civilian targets) by terrorist organizations (one of whom then takes control of the Gaza strip) and, when Israel responds to the attacks, it is chastised and demonized. This from a group (the UNHRC) which seems to be fixated and obsessed with condemning and demonizing Israel while ignoring and only expressing “deep concern” for human rights abuses in places like Somalia and Burma.

Whither America?

President Obama is planning on delivering a speech to public school students. As the Department of Education website notes

During this special address, the president will speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.

A very commendable message indeed…except that some on the right have labeled it as an attempt to promote socialist ideals. In their report, Some Parents Oppose Obama School Speech, the New York Times quotes a parent in Pearland, TX

“The thing that concerned me most about it was it seemed like a direct channel from the president of the United States into the classroom, to my child,” said Brett Curtiss, an engineer from Pearland, Tex., who said he would keep his three children home.

“I don’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement.”

(McKinley, James, “Some Parents Oppose Obama School Speech“, The New York Times, September 3, 2009)

Conservative talk shows and Conservative politicians like Oklahoma State Senator Steve Russell are all ablaze claiming that Obama is trying to create a cult of personality around himself in a similar manner to Kim Jung-il of North Korea and Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The Republican party chair of Florida even claimed that the speech is politically motivated and he “was appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology” (McKinley, James, “Some Parents Oppose Obama School Speech“, The New York Times, September 3, 2009).

What has happened to the Republican part of Ronald Reagan? Where has political discourse gone in the past 25 years? The fault is not just the Republicans — the Democrats are also very much to blame for the erosion of thoughtful, meaningful political discourse in today’s society. But the level to which these two sides will stoop appalls me. When I was a child we all listened to a speech given by the President of the United States. The man elected President was President of ALL Americans — not just liberals or conservatives — not just Republicans or Democrats — ALL Americans.

It is one thing to speak up in dissent of governmental policy or action (or inaction) – some consider that to be a form of patriotism (although the actual phrase is inaccurately attributed to Thomas Jefferson) and it is definitely free speech. But the politicization of even the simplest speech by the leader of our country and inaccurately portraying it as an attempt to promote a “socialist” or “liberal” agenda is shameful. Left wing pundits did it during the Bush administration and now the right wing pundits are doing their part during the Obama administration.

What has happened to civil discourse in this country? We need to find it again…or we, as a country, are lost and may well be doomed to repeat the Civil War some day.