O/S Partition problem

Question

I just took delivery of a new PE2800 and the drive configuration I ordered was to have 2x36GB as RAID 1 for the O/S and 6x73GB in RAID 5 for data storage. This is fine, however for some reason on my O/S virtual drive, the 36GB was split up with only a 12GB C: drive and a 21.79GB D: drive extended partition. I would much rather have my O/S Raid as a single C: drive...is there anyway I can do this without too much work? I'm in a position where I have the time and freedom to play around as I won't be commissioning the server for a few weeks....better to make these kind of changes now then regret it later, although I don't particularly want to have to reinstall the O/S etc. I also don't want to have to shell out for Partition Magic or something like that to combine the space.   Any ideas would be appreciated.....as well as any ideas on why the drive was split in the first place.   Thanks,   Kevin Coles

Dev Mgr · Answer

Remove any partition after the 12GB partition and then use diskpart to extend the partition.

This does assume you're using Windows 2000 or 2003 (you didn't mention this in your opening post).

If you're using Linux or so, you may need to look at other tools.

Kevin_Coles · Answer

Sorry I forgot to mention that it is Windows Server 2003 for the O/S. I will give Diskpart a look and try it out. Do you have any idea why it would have been partitioned this way?   Kevin

Kevin_Coles · Answer

Hello again,

I also forgot to mention that the 12GB C: partition is the system partition. From what I read on a Microsoft: "Diskpart blocks the extension of only the current system or boot partition". I played around a little bit and would appear that I cannot extend this partition to use the entire 36GB Raid container. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Kevin

Dev Mgr · Answer

Didn't think about that limitation. Then the only options are to use 3rd party tools like Partition Magic or equivalent products I think.

One involving option may be to ghost the partition to a network share (will need to create a dos or Linux boot floppy and have network drivers on there), then delete the partition and ghost it back to use the full space.

As to why it's installed like that, I'm not sure why Dell does that, as it's not an OS limitation (NT4 can't/couldn't boot to a partition larger than 7.8GB, but 2000 and 2003 don't have any problems with a 36GB boot partition).

Kevin_Coles · Answer

Thanks.....I've come to the conclusion that Partition Magic would be the only safe option. That being said I will probably leave it alone and live with it. I moved my swap file to the D: partition and I will install all but the most fussy apps to the D:. I suspect there is a performance reason maybe with the sector size or something that makes them limit the system partition size. I would be interested though if anyone has a definitive explanation from Dell as to why it does this.   Thanks,   Kevin

PowerEdge HDD/SCSI/RAID

O/S Partition problem

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