Extending Basic volumes in DL380

[M.KANAGARAJ]

Dear Friends,

In my DL380 system , I need to extend a partition from one drive ( drive 0 )to a new drive ( drive 1 ). Drive D0 is a basic disk with two partitions, one is running windows 2003 OS and the other stores User Data. Drive 1 is a newly created logical drive in an Existing Raid 5 Array and is available as a basic volume . Can i convert the basic partitions in Drive 0 to dynamic volumes without causing damage to the OS & data in it. *** shadow copy is enabled in the data volume in drive 0.*** If both drives are converted to dynamic volumes, what is the procdure to extend the data volume in Drive 0 using DISKPART utility. screen shot of Raid configuration and partition ( disk management ) is attached .

Thanks for your valuable suggestions

Regards
M.Kanagaraj

[e4services]

We have articles on our Tech Support area of our Web site on this exact situation. In summary:
You would only need Diskpart if you were expanding the OS partition. You should be able to simply use the Window Disk Managerment to Span the volume "E" into the free space.
A spanned volume is made from free disk space that is linked together from multiple disks (up to a maximum of 32 disks). A spanned volume can be extended onto additional disks. A spanned volume cannot be mirrored.
Windows 2000/3 accommodates both basic and dynamic storage. A disk system can contain any combination of storage types. However, all volumes on the same disk must use the same storage type. Upgrading a disk from basic to dynamic can be done from the Disk Management MMC Snap-in. In Programs, go to select Disk Management from Administrative Tools. You may be prompted to upgrade your disks or you can right-click the disk to upgrade it.
WARNING: Upgrading a disk to dynamic storage will render the entire disk unreadable to operating systems other than Windows 2000. This is a one-way process. In order to change back to basic disk format, the drive must be repartitioned.