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We have a Fujitsu Primergy TX100 S3P with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

We had 500 GB disks on this server, we decided to replace them with 4TB disks. We made a copy of the system to a portable drive. Then we took out the disks and put in new ones and restored the system from the USB disk. After booting up the system in disk management we had this: enter image description here I was able to expand a volume in disk management. enter image description here

However, I have a problem with the second unallocated space disk. I can't extend the unallocated space to the C drive. The options are locked. enter image description here

The driver I have installed is: enter image description here

Here's the question, How to extend the unallocated space?

Michał Lipok
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ツ PilaR ツ
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2 Answers2

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I bet your logical drive is MBR-partioned, limiting partitions to 2 TB.

Right-click the disk and change the scheme to GPT. After that you should have no difficulties with larger partitions.

Zac67
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    Thank you for your response. Unfortunately, the option to convert to GPT is blocked/inactive. Unless the problem needs to be solved from the command line or the driver doesn't support it? Remarks: we have RAID1 on "Software MegaRAID..." – ツ PilaR ツ Apr 09 '21 at 07:11
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    Hm - is that a 32-bit 2012 server? It might be a limitation when running w/o UEFI boot. – Zac67 Apr 09 '21 at 07:24
  • ツPilaRツ is my employee so I ask additional question here to yours @Zac67 answer/comment. Can we simply enable `UEFI` support in `BIOS` without affecting the current operation of the server? As to your question about 32Bit .... No it is 64Bit.. W2021 Essential as far as I know is always 64Bit ... or I miss something ? – Michał Lipok Apr 09 '21 at 08:09
  • oh.. .I mean W2012 not W2021 (edit timeout so I comment again) – Michał Lipok Apr 09 '21 at 08:15
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    64-bit should always support GPT but I'm not 100% sure. No, you can't simply switch the BIOS to UEFI boot, but there are ways to migrate / change the bootloader - don't have anything handy right now, sorry. – Zac67 Apr 09 '21 at 08:58
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    Check out [this Q&A](https://serverfault.com/questions/899703/how-to-convert-mbr-to-gpt-and-change-from-bios-legacy-boot-to-uefi/899751#899751), it's almost the same problem. – Zac67 Apr 09 '21 at 20:29
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You will have to convert your MBR partition to GPT to extend beyond 2Tbytes. This is not supported on boot media and not in a running OS. Also, this is almost impossible on softraid setups, as the RAID will have to be online in another OS.

  • Boot from a Windows 10 media with "Troubleshoot > Advanced options > Command Prompt"
  • Triple-Check that your RAID drivers are there and that you can see your drive (ONE time)
  • run:

(in CMD)

mbr2gpt /validate
mbr2gpt /convert /allowFullOS

Change your BIOS/UEFI settings to allow boot from GPT.

bjoster
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