Capacity Expansion on NetRaid 1si under Windows 2000

[David Sung]

My Net Raid 1si Configuration is as follow:
Firmware: F.02.05
BIOS ver.: B.02.03
Net Raid Assistant ver.: B.01.04
O.S.: Windows 2000 5.00.2195 (No service pack is installed)
NetRaid 1si driver ver.: 2.66.0.0
HP NetRaid Virtual Device Driver is present under the "system devices" category in Device Manager

1x9Gb(Should be a 36gb but just for convenience in testing for capacity expansion)
5x36Gb

Firstly, I have set up a RAID-5 array with 3x9Gb(Logical Sizes) in one logical drive which is not a system partition. The virtual sizing option is disabled by default.
Everything goes smooth here. However problem came when I added one more drive into the existing array using Net Raid Assistant. After the rebuild process, the Disk Management Console shows correctly a 9Gb unallocated space. And I could create a extended partition on that unallocated space. But how can I merge the extended partition with the existing primary partition. According to the Net Raid manual, it seems that it require me to selecting both partitions simultaneously, but how???
Thx very much!!

David

[Roger Faucher]

Sorry, I don't know the answer but is it possible that it's like selecting multiple partitions with Disk Management within Computer Management in WIN2K, where you hold down the Shift/Ctrl key and click multiple selections? Just a thought.

[Robert Demmer_1]

Netraid Software, W2k and nt4 are not able to merge or extend partitions without data loss. We had the same problem. We tested successfully 2 workarounds.
1)Backup partition, delete it, create bigger partition and restore.
2)We tried Powerquest?s "Server Magic 4.0"
It?s very easy to handle, setup and partition extension within 10 minutes, no data loss, price (unfortunately) around USD400.

[David Sung]

Thanks you all especially Roger and Robert.
Could you tell me the exact procedures to expand the NetRAID partition in Windows 2000 even data corruption may occur. Is this really work without any help of 3rd party software. As I know, Microsoft no longer support the creation of stripped set of Basic Disk. However, according to the manual of NetRAID, Dynamic Disk is not support by NetRAID, then how can I expand the RAID partition? So it makes me confused.