MSA1000 Expanding a drive in windows 2003

[Vincent Breton_2]

I have expend a logical unit in the MSA1000 and windows 2003 do not expend the formatted part of the drive but create an unformatted partition in the drive just beside the formatted partition. What do I need to do to expend the formated part of the drive ? In win2000 I just need to expend the logical unit and the formatted space of the drive expend in windows.

[Vincent Breton_2]

I reply to myself...to add more information about my question.

The drive on Windows 2003 is a LOGICAL Drive configured as a BASIC Disk. After I have extended the logical drive Windows is showing some empty space on the Logical Disk, but the partition size remains the same.

How do we expand the Partition, so we have more space at the Volume to use ?
Is it a good idea to change the Windows Partition Type to Dynamic ? In the documentation I find somewere it is not recommend to use dynamic type partition with MSA1000.

Is it a better practice to use diskpart utility tool in windows 2003 to extend my basic disk partion instead of changing it to Dynamic ?

diskpart
list disk
select disk "X"
select part 1
extend

Do we need to install the HP StorageWorks Hardware Providers (HWP) for Windows 2003 when we use Microsoft Virtual Disk Service (VDS): diskpart ?

Best regards.

[CA1324534]

for basic disks use the diskpart utility. or you could also use Virtual Storage Replicator to do it (it used to ship free with the MSA, but I do not know if it still does)

[CA1004210]

Vincent,

yep diskpart is the tool you want...Be aware of the following:
1. system partition or a partition with a healthy paging file can not be extended in this manner.
2. if a partition existed originally on a basic disk - even after converting this disk to dynamic - you can not use dynamic disk's expansion capabilities for that disk partition.

I am certain that the above is true for Windows 2000 - you may like to confirm it one more time for Windows 2003.

But, yes - in short - to address your immediate concern - diskpart is the way to go.

Regards,
Saket.