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Is it possible to use DD to just replace C: on a server, not the whole disk?
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Is it possible to use DD to just replace C: on a server, not the whole disk?

I have several personal Windows templates that I use on my own servers. Today I have a server at OVH that have 4 HDDs.
Drive0 has 4 partitions (one 350MB, one 120GB OS, one big DATA, and one smaller DATA)

The server is running Windows Server 2012 R2. I want to change it to Windows Server 2016.

Normally I would use
wget -O- http://my.site/Windows10u5.gz | gunzip | dd of=/dev/sda

But this command will delete all partitions on the Drive0 disk. How can I get it to just put the OS files under the OS partition? And will it work? What with the 350MB partition?

Comments

  • write until specified block where partition ends.

    Highly unlikely to impossible to pull off, even more remote.

    Unlikely that windows will like that either afterwards on the non system partitions - table is at start.

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • farnoxfarnox Member
    edited June 2017

    Your partitions show up on linux as sdaX. X being the number of the partition. You can write data to a specific partition using dd of=/dev/sdaX. If this will actually boot will depend on how your disk image looks like and how Windows likes it. This will not boot if your disk image was made from the whole hard drive.

    Thanked by 1myhken
  • myhkenmyhken Member

    Hmmm...maybe I just will try the IPMI and upload the .iso file there and upgrade my server directly. Never done that before but it should work, right?

  • If 2016 works like 2008 -> 2012 - yes, it can be upgraded by IPMI if you have a DVD drive (virtual or not). It likely cannot be upgraded if you only have remotedesktop access.

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