Repartitioning C:\ drive - best way?

[Tim Grizzle]

Got two new DL380 G3's. C drive is too small (6Gb) so I'm trying to repartition it to 15Gb atleast. Done lots of researching, tried using PQ PM 8.0 (supports NTFS, but not W2K server). I have four 36Gb drives in the array, ready for assigning. Just need to decide the best way of doing it. So it seems my options are down to these three(?):

#1 - Buy Symantec / PowerQuest Volume Manager 2.0 at $1020 for both servers, and repartition on the fly (ouch).

#2 - Spend a day or two getting intimate with the new machines, rebuilding them and changing the partition at that point (no real loss as they are both still in pre-production phase), or

#3 - Attempt to use new Microsoft Diskpart.exe for W2k (standard with W2003). Though it's command prompt only, this seems to allow the redirecting of free space to a needy drive.

Appreciate anyones / everyone's thoughts on it.

[Eric_76]

if there is no data on it that matters then re-doing the server is the cheapest way and it should not take more that a day.

#5 - I think Partition Manager by Paragon is cheaper and with a patch it also works with 2003.

[Tim Grizzle]

I have tried the Partition Magic 8, but it would fail out after seeing it was a W2K server. I'll have to check out Parson's version.

Another friend suggested using DFS and put new programs files, data etc on the D:\. And move the swap file to the D:\ as well.

[Prashant (I am Back)]

Hi,

If you are using dl380 3 it will be having smart array 5i. If you want to manage you array on same server dony buy anything use smart start cd and install acu or download from web to magae array on server. and you can do it all online with need to restart the server also.

For any further query post back.

Regards,
Prashant S.

[e4services]

Also, You can use the Diskpart.exe utility to manage disks, partitions, and volumes from a command-line interface. You can use Diskpart.exe on both Basic disks and Dynamic disks. If an NTFS volume resides on a hardware RAID 5 container that has the capability of adding space to the container, you can extend the NTFS Volume with Diskpart.exe while the disk remains a Basic disk.
Use the extend command to incorporate unallocated space into an existing volume while preserving the data.
At a command prompt, type diskpart.exe.
Type list volume to display the existing volumes on the computer.
Type Select volume volume number where volume number is number of the volume that you want to extend.
Type extend [size=n] [disk=n] [noerr] . The following describes the parameters

[Jonas Back_2]

Here's a link how to use DISKPART and EXTEND. It says: "System or boot volumes may be blocked from being extended, and you may receive the following error: "

So give it a try. I wouldn't trust DISKPART do a great job. I would backup C: to an image first (we use Altiris, or Rapid Deployment Pack). In case something breaks you can always restore it.

[Tim Grizzle]

Well, to be honest, I installed Volume Manager 2.0, and it blows. Yeah, it's got lots of neat tools, but the advertised merge feature doesn't work with the root drive. Too bad. I won't mess with Diskpart.exe until I hear more from other's who've used it. I'll just use MS DFS to have program files and Docs&settings hosted off the array, and move the swap file there as well.

Problem kinda solved, though not in the way I wanted.

Thanks everyone!!!