PROBLEM:
My System (C:) and Data (D:) partitions are full and I need to expand them or move them to larger drives.
SPECS:
- Dell PowerEdge 2900 server
- Adaptec 39320A SCSI adapters
- Dell Perc 5/i RAID controller
- 3 Maxtor 10K RPM 73GB serial attached SCSI (SAS) drives in RAID 5
This configuration presents a single ~145GB disk to Windows Server 2003 R2
It has 2 partitions: C: & D:
- C is 12GB and holds the system - it is full
- D is ~133GB and would be full if the data were not compressed
SOLUTION IDEAS:
Here are some options I was considering:
- Buy a large SATA drive and move the D partition to it. Then, expand
the C partition to fill the 145GB RAID 5 SAS.
- I think this is my preferred solution, but I'd like some advice on what tools are best:
- I'm concerned about resizing a System partition.
- Windows diskpart.exe (part of Server 2003) specifically supports data partition resizing only, not system partitions.
- Many partition tools are for desktop use only, not server use
- Do you know of any Dell utilities that can do this - I've booted into the Perc 5/i controller settings and perhaps there's a way to do it here. Can anyone confirm?
- Buy one or more large SAS drives and insert them into the 5 remaining empty slots on the server. Create a new array and move the C & D to this new array.
- Again, I'm not sure what the best tools are to accomplish this.
- I'm also checking with Dell, but would appreciate advice from others that have done this before.
- Boot to a live CD (Linux based Parted Magic?) and load it with drivers for the Adaptec and Perc 5/i controllers - if this is possible (might have to use Windows based Live CD?). Use standard tools to move the now offline C and D partitions to larger drives.
- Use NTBackup to backup the system and system state. Re-install the Windows Server 2003 R2 from scratch onto new larger drives and restore.
- I'm really looking for suggestions for a way to expand these partitions without having to re-install the Server.
- I'm trying to avoid rebuilding from scratch.
Any other caveats I should know about?