Windows 2003 and 2000 Server; adding to a partition

Question

I've added a 74GB hard drive to the RAID5 config of each of our PowerEdge 2600 servers (one is a Windows 2003 server box, the other 2000 server), and all went well. Windows recognizes the 68.24GB as unallocated space. However, I'm not able to add that space to the non-system, logical drive partition of each computer (D: on system 1, X: on system 2).

In both cases, I've tried DiskPart.exe and ExtPart.exe and both generate an error message. Diskpart says:

"The volume you have selected may not be extended. Please select another volume and try again."

Extpart says:

"Unable to expand partition. Check if there is sufficient space on the disk."

I'm not sure why this is happening. I can't extend it directly through the Disk Management utility in Windows either.

Any ideas? I'm open to any suggestion that will allow us to extend these partitions without formatting any data, even if it requires purchases software. Thanks.

Mark_A_Smith · Answer

How (exactly) did you add the drive to the Raid 5?  Does the unallocated space show up at the end of the existing disk (disk0 or disk1) or as a New Disk?

Mark_A_Smith · Answer

Hmmm this should work fine.  You can ONLY extend the last partition.  Is the disk Basic - this won't work for a Dynamic disk.  How about Partition Magic?

AFMTech · Answer

Sorry if I left out some details. I popped the new drive into the 1x6 backplane, saw the drive detected, added new member to the virtual disk, the array was reconstructed and resynched, and when that was done, I restarted and saw the space in Disk Management.

In Disk Management, the new hard drive shows up at the end of Disk 0, in both cases. It's right after the partition that I want to add the space to.

AFMTech · Answer

If I right-click the disk, it says Convert to Dynamic Disk, so I assume its Basic.

Dev Mgr · Answer

Microsoft has an article on how to use diskpart here.

2 important lines in there are:

" Only the extension of data volumes is supported. System or boot volumes may be blocked from being extended..."

and

" You cannot extend the partition if the system page file is located on the partition. Move the page file to a partition that you do not wish to extend."

AFMTech · Answer

Yeah, I thought I made it clear that these are non-system partitions (D: and X: partitions)...the pagefile is on the C: partition on both of these servers.

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

Windows 2003 and 2000 Server; adding to a partition

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