Installation and Upgrade Guide

1.4.1.1 INITIALIZE Option
When you specify the INITIALIZE option, the following operations take place:
• All software and data files that already exist on the target disk are removed. The software
can only be recovered from a backup of the disk, so make sure that you either have a backup
or will not need the data again.
• The operating system is installed.
Specify the INITIALIZE option and perform a full installation under any of the following
conditions:
• If your computer is new (it has never had any version of any operating system running on
it, including factory-installed software).
• If your computer is already running a version of the OpenVMS operating system and you
want to overwrite the entire contents of the system disk (the operating system, application
software, and user files).
• If you want to keep an existing system disk and install OpenVMS on a different disk.
• If you are running the OpenVMS operating system but cannot upgrade. For example, if you
changed the names of system directories on the system disk, the upgrade procedure will
not work correctly. Therefore, unless you restore the system disk to its original directory
structure, you must reinstall the operating system using the INITIALIZE option.
NOTE: During initialization of an OpenVMS I64 target system disk, the installation process
creates a diagnostic partition, visible only at the console prompt. For more information about
this partition and options you can take, see Appendix I (page 269).
For systems that support the Instant Capacity (iCAP) feature, CPU status (how many cores are
available and how much time they have remaining) is not affected by initialization of the system
disk. Such information is stored in NVRAM on the Integrity server.
1.4.1.2 PRESERVE Option
When you specify the PRESERVE option, the following operations take place:
THEN ...IF ...
• The operating system is installed.
• All other contents of the target disk are retained.
The OpenVMS operating system is not already
installed on the target disk
The operating system is upgraded, as follows:
• Old operating system files and new files are merged or replaced.
• All other contents of the target disk are retained.
The OpenVMS operating system is installed on
the target disk
NOTE: If you intend to choose the PRESERVE option (because there are certain files on the
disk that you want to retain), HP recommends that you first make a backup copy of your system
disk. If there is any problem during the installation or upgrade that might affect the integrity of
the disk, you will have the backup copy as a safeguard.
If you choose the PRESERVE option and choose a target disk that already contains the OpenVMS
Version 8.3-1H1 software, you are provided with the option to either reconfigure or reinstall the
OpenVMS operating system:
• Reconfigure the operating system if you want to change the options you chose to include
when the operating system was installed.
• Reinstall the operating system if you think that your system files might have become
corrupted.
For additional configuration information, see Section 7.11 (page 136).
34 Getting Started