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December 4th, 2013 00:00

Dell SBUU disk partitioning.

Hello. Long time ago. In a galaxy far far away . There was a desperate bearded dude, calling for the help on Dell forums.

Setup:

Lets say i have a PowerEdge 2950 G3 server, with PERC 5/i controller and 2x 500gb HDD's in mirror raid. I want to install Windows Server 2003 X64 STD R2 using dell SBUU 6.5.0 (any version supporting 2950 will do, it is irrelevant for the question) and the OS disc ofc.

Goal:

To keep the small 32mb dell Utility Partition alive, and to make a win2003 install with a custom winnt.sif file ( i need to have the User directory on second partition and Windows+ Program Files directories on first one)

Question:

Well, how do i change the disk partitioning in SBUU? (i.e you are able to select the C: partition size in sbuu, but you are not able to make a second partition there)

What i was able to find:

As there is no option of making the needed winnt.sif customizations i went lurking on the hard disk after the first SBUU reboot. It turns out that it makes a temporary +- 4.8gb partition on hdd right after the utility partition. That partition contains scripts+drivers and win2003 install files. I was able to find a valid (i guess) winnt.sif file on that partition under the $win_nt$~bt directory.

All i need to do is add the   ProfilesDir="D:\Users\" under the [GuiUnattended] section of the answer file. And modify dell SBUU partitioning order so i have 2 partitions (C: and D:)

The problem is: i was not able to find anything related to disk partitioning on the temp.partition. So i am not able to modify it for second partition creating.

Actually i was able to find a workaround to make this, but it is rather long and works on about 50% of servers(MBR related issue, cant seem to find why it works on some servers and why it is not working on the others. The process for each server is identical. But that is another story). It involves installing w/o SBUU,  multiple reboots, winPE boots and utility partition recreation using upinit.bin and related scripts and so on... - the process is very time consuming. So, i am just looking for a more adequate solution.

I hope you guys are able to help me.

Will keep trying to find a solution myself, but any help will be great.

Thank you.

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