Partition resize on raid 5

You have 2 choices and your choice depends on which is more cost efficient for you:

- purchase something like Acronis Disk Director for servers and shrink the D drive at the beginning of the partition and grow the C drive with the freed up space

- back up everything on your D-drive, delete your D-drive partition, download extpart.exe from support.dell.com, extract the files, in a dos-windows run a "extpart c: size_you_want_to_add_in_MBs" (e.g. "extpart c: 8192" to add 8GB), then recreate your D-drive and restore the data to it.

With either option you always want to have full backups of your data, just in case something doesn't go 100% according to plan.

wrogers...

Paragon will also do the job, never used Easus. Before I would use any util I would create some room on the C: partition. I am sure you could cleanup/ free at least 1.5 gigs, as I worked on many  W2000 servers with only 4.9 Gig.   

This is a very small business server and I have looked all over for non necessary files and connot find any thing I can remove. The Windows server 2003 folder is 5+ GB alone, then add my necessary business software and the drive is consumed.  For some reason today my C drive shows only 310 MB left. Restoring the Spftware should I lose it would be a nightmare. I inherited this server and software and dont have a clue how to restore on a moments notice. Any suggestions? Also is thier software that would Image the C drive alone to a single drive or an external bootable drive?

How easy is Acronis to use and do you have any idea how much space is needed to install?

I have found that the pagefile files (pagefile.sys) which in  your VIEW settings is typically set to HIDDEN, default to the C: drive.

You will have to do a server reboot, but for all my servers, I have moved my pagefile.sys files to the D: or E: partitions and this saves 2-4GB depending on the size of the pagefile.

However, I'm in the same situation as you all above.  I have a poweredge 1900.  I've installed the Dell Openmanage utilities, and I don't see a way to resize partitions to accomodate future growth needs.  I have an old server which I inherited when I took this position that had free space and allowed one to 'extend' volume sizes as needed.

Does anyone have advice on this?

This problem is easy to solve, just resize other partitions to be smaller and get some unallocated space behind the system partition, after that you can expand the OS partition. You may try partition magic server, with which you just need to drag and move on the disk map, very easy.

Here is a tutorial how to resize raid 5 partition without data losing

670MB is somewhat too small for a system partition.

Which system do you use? If you are use Windows Vista or some other more advanced system, you can extend and shrink the disk with the Disk Management tool.

If you use some other system, I still recommend the partition software which can ease the partitioning process. However, to make a bacup of the data to avoid any data loss is needed.

How to backup hard drive partition?

After all the data has been backed up, you may extend the system partition without any worry!

How to resize RAID 5 array?

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I agree with spotcat and Jewlee's idea. I have tried EASEUS Partition Master and it works well.

Resize RAID 5

Don't worry, it is easy to solve this problem, see the guide how to resize raid 5 partition that I have bookmarked.

First, there is NO METHOD to resize a boot (C:) partition that has no risk ... there is always risk in doing this.

Second, I would find a new article/tutorial ... maybe this one helped you, but it is very poorly written and does not display even a fundamental understanding of what RAID has to do with Windows partitions (which is nothing).  There are two main types of RAID - software and hardware RAID.  Both scenarios the article describes include servers that would be running hardware RAID, meaning that there is a dedicated processor managing the read/writes from/to the individual drives, while Windows sees just a single "logical" unit of storage.  Windows is not even aware of the individual disks that make up the RAID array.  Software RAID is a RAID array managed by Windows (or some other OS).  RAID 5 is possible from within Windows, but this article was not written for software RAID - that changes everything. 

Because Windows is not aware of the individual drives, resizing partitions on a RAID 5 is no different than resizing partitions on a single/non-RAID drive.  He mentions this, which makes me wonder why even talk about RAID at all without explaining that RAID doesn't even matter when doing this.

Sorry ... just don't want there to be any confusion out there.

I don't necessarily want to talk about the differences, but the article talked about how to resize partitions on a RAID 5 and spoke of the RAID 5 as if it had some bearing on the outcome, which it doesn't.  Even though I'd venture to guess 95% of servers are running on hardware RAID, it doesn't matter if they aren't.  Resizing partitions is resizing partitions.

There are a million articles on how to do this - there is no need to reinvent the wheel.  You can definitely use any of the utilities mentioned in this thread, which can resize partitions while keeping data intact, or you can use free utilities like Dell's ExtPart (same as Microsoft's DiskPart without the limitation of not working on system partitions), or even a Windows 7, Vista, Server 2008, or Server 2008 R2 DVD.  For the latter, it is necessary to backup/delete the partition adjacent to (next to) the C: drive, as it can only Extend into Unpartitioned Space.

I wouldn't tell him there is no way other than to rebuild, but there is NO risk-free way of changing the system partition.  He should know that going in so he can be prepared, and not go in with no backup and find that the guy who told him there will be "no data loss" was wrong.

Your explanation is great, but what do you want to talk about, the difference between software RAID and hardware RAID? wrogers1942 has said that he wants to resize partition on poweredge 830, do you want to tell him, no it is not safe to reisze, just rebuild the Server?

I guess the reason why you talking about this is that wrogers1942 didn't tell us whether the raid 5 is software RAID or hardware RAID. Will you use software RAID on poweredge 830?

I agree with everything you said and it is wonderful, but you should give some idea how to solve the problem.  We want to read an detailed article from you, I'm waiting to applaud.

I suggest  that you can use other partition softwares like Aomei Partition Assistant Server Edition, I had used it and i feel its function is very complete. like as copy,delete, wipe,shrink ,resize,extend ,etc.

 i think you'll be surprised by its  powerful function.

Hi,

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As this thread quiet for a while, I wonder if you have solved your problem. Assuming you have fixed, in case of who have the same problem. I think there is a better solution with step by step tutorial. I hope it will be helpful.

How to Resize Partition on Server 2000/2003/2008 with Partition Magic Server Software?

http://www.partition-magic.org/server/windows-server-partition-resize.html

I have been puzzled by a similar situation. But I used easeus just you mentioned to solve it successfully.

May be you can follow  this guide how to resize partition on raid 5

Good luck