Using Diskpart.exe

[DPN]

Hi
I have hardware raid 5 originally consisting of 6 disks, 1 spare. I've added 2 new disks, original size was 546GB, new size with new disks when viewed through system management home page is 820GB, so I take it from this that the RAID is all good. In windows disk management the new disks show as unallocated space, current format is NTFS basic disk. I am going use diskpart.exe to extend onto the new space.

However, I read in MS article 325590
*For Basic volumes, the unallocated space for the extension must be the next contiguous space on the same disk*

My question is, in the managment home page my physical disks are arranged as follows:
SCSIBus:1 SCSIID:0
" " :1
" " :2
" " :3
" " :4
" " :5(spare)
" " :8
" " :9
8 & 9 are the new disks.

will my new disks be seen as the next contiguous space on the same disk ?

Thanks.

[Rune J. Winje]

Hi,
Diskpart only cares about how it looks to Windows.

If you open Disk Manager and see the unallocated space just after your existing volume you should be good to go.

Be aware that diskpart has limitations on extending the system volume and how many times a volume can be extended.

Following may be of interest for extending the system volume: http://searchwindowsserver.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid68_gci1126671,00.html
Otherwise some 3.rd party tools handle extension of the system volume well too.


Cheers,
Rune

[DPN]

Hi Rune,
Thanks for the reply.

Yeah thats what I thought, but wasn't sure about the RAID physical side of things as the spare sits right in the middle of the disks plus the numbering is out. And yes in the windows disk management the unallocated space is the next contigous space on the disk. Its not the system volume either its our E:drive holding our Lotus notes data directory and also user home directories.

I'm doing this tommorow its a major upgrade, so I'm very nervous having not done this before.

Thanks

D