Increase Server 2003 Primary NTFS Partition (C:\) size?

Question

I have a Dell PowerEdge 2900 machine with OS Server 2003 (x64) that is part of central domain. All the partitions on this machine are of type NTFS. I am currently running out of free space on C:\ and because of this I keep getting caching and other program errors.

I have some free space available on secondary partition D:\ on same Disk and would like to allocate some (around 20GB) to C:\ partition. I also have some critical program data on this and cannot afford to lose it.

This whole Disk (C:\ and D:) are part of two hardware enabled RAID 1 type disks. Each hard drive is a 146GB Serial-Attach SCSI HotPlug Hard Drive.

I looked at Acronis Partition Manager and this program looks convincing but I don't want to risk my program data without any feedback from actual user who has used it.

Has anybody tried this? If so, then how safe is this program and approx long could it take to resize partition with 60GB data existing on it?

Are there any other better and cheaper options than this?

Answer 1

"Relatively safe" is not completely safe. Things CAN go wrong and when you modify partitions sizes, you DO run the risk of corrupting data or your entire server. I don't like doing it.

If you're running low on space, WHY? 2003 is not a demanding (by today's standards) operating system in terms of disk utilization. UNLESS this is a terminal server. Then the number of profiles can cause significant space utilization on the c: drive. If it's NOT a terminal server, I suggest you try to figure out what is taking up the space (DIRUSE, TreeSize, WinDirStat can all be used to get a handle on it (I prefer DIRUSE on the command line)). Then, move all DATA off the C: drive. For more information (20+ things to look into moving off the C: drive) see http://www.lwcomputing.com/tips/static/bootdrivesize.asp

Answer 2

Be warned that partitioning disks can result in data loss. What I'd make sure you do before atempting to partition your hard drives is that you do some cloning first so that if you do mess it up you can drop back on your clone copy and be back where you started.

The only partion program I've used is partition magic but Norton have drop it from their products now. Gparted is another good one I've heard of and its already mentioned here.

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ <-- something like this will come loaded with a load of tools and comes with gparted and a number of clone tools too.

Regarding your RAID setup these programs may or may not see your raided disks. It all depends if these tools come pre loaded with some common drivers for raid controller.

Anyway ultimate boot cd is a good place to start. There is no harm starting it up and see if it see's your disks?

Answer 3

Extending C: is relatively safe. Shrinking D: is trickier, but still doable.

I like GParted, which has worked well for me with NTFS partitions.