Question

More Free Space on Server

Asked by: taordw01

I have a Dell Server in a Dentist Office with a RAID5 setup which consists of 5 80GB SATA drives.  There are 2 partitions C and D.  C is approx 10GB and D is the balance.  I need to extend C to about 20-25GB to add software upgrades, there is only 1.4 GB of free space now.  Plenty of free space on D which holds data from various programs.  What is the best method to complete this with no data loss and no reinstallations?

TIA
Tim

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Asked On
2009-08-11 at 10:27:24ID24643916
Tags

Server03

Topic

Computer Servers

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: marine7275Posted on 2009-08-11 at 10:39:22ID: 25071441

Your C drive is more than likely boot and sys partition which makes it a little more tricky.


I highly recommend you consider Ghosting the present disk to a new one.
You can resize the c: partition by doing a partition to partition
ghost.

This is less expensive then the server magic version and a safer
operation to do. I highly recommend that if you go the server magic
route that you backup d: and then delete it. Expand into raw space
works almost all the time. Trying to shrink d: to provide space to
expand c: can fail trashing the entire drive.

 

by: taordw01Posted on 2009-08-11 at 10:46:24ID: 25071507

Drive C is the boot and sys partition.  Don't forget this is a RAID 5 configuration with 5 disks.

Thanks

Tim

 

by: deaditePosted on 2009-08-11 at 12:39:45ID: 25072549

Easy, done this lots of times....

1) Download Parted Magic ISO image and burn it to a CD(http://partedmagic.com/download.html)  
2) Backup any important files (just in case)
3) Defrag your hard drives (Will help reduce the risk of errors)
4) Boot the Parted Magic ISO
5) Run GParted
6) Shrink the beginning of your D: Partition (This will add space between the C & D Drives)
7) Grow your C: Partition into the unused space
8) Commit your changes, reboot and verify all is good
    -BTW Windows might complain that it needs to run check disk on the first reboot

There's even lots of video's of using Parted Magic and GParted on Youtube:

 

by: deaditePosted on 2009-08-11 at 12:44:46ID: 25072603

Hmmm I kinda assumed that the RAID5 was a hardware RAID?  If it's hardware RAID you should be good.... if the RAID is controlled by software such as Windows... then you might have issues.  I've only done the above on hardware RAID5.

 

by: taordw01Posted on 2009-08-11 at 12:51:59ID: 25072671

Yes it is a hardware RAID

Thanks
Tim

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