Server 2003 - Disk Partition Software - Which one?

[Paid_Peanuts]

I have Server 2003 R2 installed, just about to run out of disk space on one of the partitions which serves as the staff home drives.

I installed a new hard disk and added it to the RAID 5 array. However I cannot add the free space to the partition - i only have the access to add it as a new physical disk.

Can anyone suggest some disk partition manager software for Server 2003? Anyone used software and got any experiences?

[laserblazer]

Ha ha, I can help. I had exactly the same problem. Get Ghost v11 and make a ghost image from your old drive. You can do all of the partitions. Create a recovery disk. Stick in the new boot drive and start up using the recovery disk. When you select copy from image it tells you what size the existing partitions are. You simply change the boot partition to the new size and then work out what size any subsequent partitions need to be. I couldn't believe how easy it was after all the trials and tribulations I had.

[cdown]

There are a number of tools that will do this for you - for example Partition Magic, Paragon etc - however the server editions are different (& more expensive) to the normal licences. I have used both on 32bit Windows 2003 servers with no problems.

Note however that you should make sure you have a full backup - including system state - before attempting any changes to partitions. If it goes wrong you'll have to do a full restore !

[laserblazer]

This is the joy of doing it my way. Firstly Ghost costs £17. You automatically create a full recovery disk and you still get to keep the existing version on the old drive. Our curriculum server has hot swap bays, so I can b*gger about on the spare drive in the morning before staff get in and then swap to the working drive in a couple of minutes.

[DMcCoy]

Does ghost support raid 5 now? I do remember having to buy Acronis true image for my home server as it supports imaging windows server and quite a lot of raid cards.

[greatone]

There is the built in win 2003 Microsoft diskpart.exe that I have successfully used to extend data volumes on our SAN

deatils on use are here:

How to use Diskpart.exe to extend a data volume in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, and in Windows 2000

[sparkeh]

I recently used Acronis Disk Director Server for this job. Worked a treat.

[contink]

Resizing partitions under windows 2003 server is a difficult task for most PC users. Now, EASEUS Partition manager Server has made resizing partitions under windows Server 2003 a simple task. ... for more information of How to Resize Partitions under Windows 2003 Server? You may visit:
How to Resize Partitions under Windows 2003 Server?

Nice bit of spam... Answers the question so I suppose it's valid but for my money I'd prefer someone who actually was a member of the community had found and used the product then reviewed it accordingly.

For anyone else looking... $149 for the server edition (20% discounts for Academic, Non-profit, Government users, etc) but that's for a single server...

No mention of RAID support or similar so anyones guess.

[IanT]

Volume Manager 2.0 supports and is aimed at Server OS's

used it on 2000 Server and 2003.

[Bezwick]

Hmmm you have got me thinking about using this idea to create a very quick and cheap disaster recovery plan. I like it - do you know if it works with Ghost 14? As we dont have a copy in school here but recon i could muster up £35 to get the new version.
Cheers

Ha ha, I can help. I had exactly the same problem. Get Ghost v11 and make a ghost image from your old drive. You can do all of the partitions. Create a recovery disk. Stick in the new boot drive and start up using the recovery disk. When you select copy from image it tells you what size the existing partitions are. You simply change the boot partition to the new size and then work out what size any subsequent partitions need to be. I couldn't believe how easy it was after all the trials and tribulations I had.

[dhicks]

Now, EASEUS Partition manager Server has made resizing partitions under windows Server 2003 a simple task...

Pay? For a partition resizing utility? You can download SystemRescueCD right now, for free, that will do the job for you. This is also another advantage of using virtual machines - our domain controller ran out of disk space the other day (at the same time it decided to have licensing verification issues, just to be awkward), so I simply told LVM to extend the disk size by 60GB then simply booted the Windows VM back up and told it to resize its disk to fill the empty space. Both operations took seconds at most.

--
David Hicks

[Techeasy]

I have Server 2003 R2 installed, just about to run out of disk space on one of the partitions which serves as the staff home drives.

I installed a new hard disk and added it to the RAID 5 array. However I cannot add the free space to the partition - i only have the access to add it as a new physical disk.

Can anyone suggest some disk partition manager software for Server 2003? Anyone used software and got any experiences?

It is very common for server hard drive running out of space. No need to worry. Many people encountered the same situation.

As to the RAID 5 Array, is it raid card or the Windows built-in function RAID 5? It is easier if you raid is constructed by raid card. You can add the new hard drive to RAID 5 and then you need a partition software to add the free space to the drive which is running out of space. Then this article can help you undstand it better Resize c drive on RAID 5 without affecting data with step by step instructions

For Server 2003, volume manager is not recommended since it only supports Windows Server NT, 2000.

For a server partition software, here is here two tutorials with different software: Live test to extend boot partition on Windows Server 2003 with Paragon Partition Manager Server.

Safe and easy solution to extend server c drive.

[powdarrmonkey]

Welcome to a dead thread.


[insert tumbleweed here]

[theriver]

Welcome to a dead thread.


[insert tumbleweed here]

Reminds me of:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3gp7B8WC4Q&feature=PlayList&p=4569FF8D1F9 E9E8E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=3"]YouTube - Ukulele Orchestra of GB - The Good the Bad the Ugly[/ame]

[zhu]

After raid created, it is the same as physical hard disk partition. To resize the partitions, don't break the raid array. I come across the tutorial about how to resize partition, it help you.