[Triskaidekaphobia]

Hi,

The system partition © on one of our servers is very low on disk space (1 GB remaining). It's a long story but the server needs to run a program that requires at least 10 GB of free space on C for temporary files, and the temp directory cannot be changed to another drive letter. 1 GB isn't enough for a server OS drive anyway. For some reason the C partition was only set to 15 GB when the server was set up. It's running Windows Server 2003. The other partition on the disk (E) is 53 GB. I have uninstalled all the programs on C that I can, and reinstalled on the E partition, and I have moved all other files that I can to E. There is no other way to gain disk space. C is a Dynamic MBR partition.

So, I tried to reallocate free space from E to C using Easeus Server Edition, but it wouldn't let me do it, and neither would GParted. So I backed up the entire E drive and deleted the partition to leave 53 GB of unallocated space, thinking this would solve the problem. If I try to allocate some of the free space to the C partition, Easeus fails on the reboot at 1% completion with "Insufficient disk space", which is odd. If I try to do this with GParted it fails with "Parted can't resize partitions managed by Windows Dynamic Disk". If I try with diskpart.exe in Windows I get "This volume cannot be extended". If I try with the Disk Management Console I get "The selected volume is a system or boot disk or was created on a basic disk on an earlier version of Windows and cannot be extended."

Why is this so difficult - what am I doing wrong?!

Many thanks
Tom

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Post removed.

Edited by Amlak, 06 August 2012 - 05:07 PM.
Potentially very dangerous information

[Amlak]

Post removed.

Edited by Amlak, 06 August 2012 - 05:07 PM.
Potentially very dangerous information

[Troy]

I am not keen on the idea of removing the drive at all. It highly depends on the server hardware however if it is a proper server then this wouldn't be an option and to try may cause loss of data. The best option would be to completely back up everything (twice) and then wipe the logical drive and recreate with a larger partition size. Then restore the backup to the newly-created, larger partition.

I have a client in a very similar situation right now, they have 146GB c: in RAID 1 with a hot spare. It is running SBS 2003 and they have lots of emails, I mean lots (over 100GB). so they have no space at all left. I have seen it as low as 22MB of free space left which causes major issues such as the Licensing CALs to disappear, services to stop running, security software unable to update. It's an absolute disaster. They have been putting up with this for months by archiving old emails into a PST and then attaching the PST from a file server. However I have finally been asked to add another drive in so we can get the c: bigger. The only option as I see it will be to backup and restore as I have mentioned. With 4 drives I will likely use RAID 5 which will give plenty of space (around 400GB or so).

[Amlak]

Post removed.

Edited by Amlak, 06 August 2012 - 05:11 PM.

[Triskaidekaphobia]

Hi guys and thank you for the replies. Sorry for not responding until now - I am watching this topic according to my settings on here, and it says I should receive email notification when someone replies, but I have not had any notifications for some reason, I just checked the topic now.

Anyway.

Firstly, yes this is one disk only. And it's not a "proper" server, it's a fairly old box that runs our antivirus server, the server for employee hours, a tape backup server for about 50 PC's, and a few other SQL servers that we need. There is no RAID.

GParted is a live boot time partition tool and it says it cannot resize partitions managed by Windows Dynamic Disk. As this is BEFORE Windows has booted, wouldn't this problem also occur if I tried to use a partition tool on the disk as a non-system disk on another PC?

I have done some reading on basic and dynamic disks, but I don't understand the purpose of a dynamic disk. Is it a "known restriction" that partitions on dynamic disks cannot be resized? If this is the case, I would probably look at a fresh install of everything onto a brand new hard disk anyway. If I should be able to resize the partition without any problems, how do I do it?

Thanks
Tom

[Amlak]

Just to answer your question only. As someone who's fairly confident with computers, I would've given my suggestion a go and see if it works. Different measures yield different results. Maybe Easeus can do what GParted failed to do but requiring some extra space. I don't know.

However, to be on the safe side, and since Troy believes what I'm suggesting is dangerous, just do what he advises.

Just in case.

Edited by Amlak, 10 May 2012 - 05:58 PM.

[Troy]

Well, since you censored what I posted, you might as well explain how it may cause loss of data. Making such a significant claim without backing it up is unhelpful in this context.

If it was a RAID array. However, we have now found out that it is not a RAID system. If you are familiar with server hardware in general (which is what I naturally assume when talking in the Windows Server forum here) then it wouldn't have needed explaining. However as you can see, now that we have determined it is not a RAID array, your suggestions may in fact work. No harm in being cautious before the full story is known, and no offence meant at your attempt to help.

[Troy]

GParted is a live boot time partition tool and it says it cannot resize partitions managed by Windows Dynamic Disk. As this is BEFORE Windows has booted, wouldn't this problem also occur if I tried to use a partition tool on the disk as a non-system disk on another PC?

Your theory is sound and I would tend to agree with you there.

Considering that you have already reinstalled programs to another partition which has since been removed, I would be looking at backup up your data and going ahead with a fresh install as you have suggested. If it is not too much hassle for you, that is. Otherwise you may wish to consider a full backup of what you currently have, then wipe the drive and create the partitions as you desire (e.g. one single partition for the whole drive). Then restore the backup to that. It should be basic after this and no longer dynamic. Here's some fun reading for dynamic disks: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/816307

Cheers

[Triskaidekaphobia]

I'm considering going down the Norton Ghost route and deleting/recreating basic partitions how I want them and restoring the data from Ghost. What do you think?

Thanks for the link - looks riveting!


Thank you both for your help.

Regards
Tom

[Troy]

If you are familiar with Norton Ghost then this would be a good choice. I would advise to have a complete separate backup regardless, just to be sure.

[Triskaidekaphobia]

Hi guys,

Just to let you know, I used Ghost to backup the C partition, then I used Aomei Dynamic Disk Converter to convert the disk from dynamic to basic. It took about 10 seconds and was not destructive! After it was converted to a basic disk I could use Easeus to resize the partition.

Thanks for your help
Tom

[Troy]

Very interesting, thanks for that information. I will check out the Aomei program, never heard of it before.

[bluespring]

Hi,

I'm a user of Windows Server 2003. The problem you mentioned was happened in my computer before, but now, I can easily resize the partitions without reinstalling the system or removing the partitions.Meanwhile, to better manage the disk, other operations to partitions are available. What is it? It is this partition software:
Hope it will help you!

[ShoppingMonk]

Previously it is available but present upcoming laptops wont have more than 2 partitions