Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of alighafour
alighafour

asked on

Can I use FDISK to create a partition for my windows 2003 server?

Hello,

I am upgrading my 3 RAID 5 76 drives to 3 RAID 5 146 gig drives for my dell poweredge 1750 using Windows 2003.

On the new drives, i am putting an image of the server which i created before.

Before i can load the images on, i have to re-create the 4 paritions that i had on the previous drives. Which command line tool (it has to be command line, or CD bootable since the new drives have nothing on them) can i use to create partitions. I heard of FDISK, but that seems to be only for win98, i also heard of DISKPART, but I am not very familiar with it...

Thank you!
Avatar of NJComputerNetworks
NJComputerNetworks
Flag of United States of America image

diskpart is what you want to use for Windows 2003.
Avatar of alighafour
alighafour

ASKER

how can i boot to diskpart? Also, when i do boot to it, how can i create this set up:

Microsoft DiskPart version 5.2.3790.1830
Copyright (C) 1999-2001 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: SQL-FS

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     C   System       NTFS   Partition      8 GB  Healthy    System
  Volume 1     D   Data         NTFS   Partition     55 GB  Healthy
  Volume 2     Z   PageFile     NTFS   Partition   4871 MB  Healthy    Pagefile

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status      Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  ----------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online        67 GB      0 B

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    OEM                 31 MB    32 KB
  Partition 2    Primary              8 GB    31 MB
  Partition 3    Extended            59 GB     8 GB
  Partition 4    Logical             55 GB     8 GB
  Partition 5    Logical           4871 MB    63 GB

DISKPART>
You can boot to WinPe 2005 (Windows Pre-installation environment) and then run DISKPART through a bat script or you can manually use diskpart to create partitions.
im sorry.I need more detail. I need to boot using the windows 2003 CD? I dont recall there being a step where i can create partitions. And if there is that step, can i simply create those partitions and abandon the rest of the setup?

Can you describe the .bat script procedure?

The more detail the better,

Thank you!
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of NJComputerNetworks
NJComputerNetworks
Flag of United States of America image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
This is a one time thing. My goal is to create the partitions (albeit, make them bigger since i have newer bigger drives) then boot to my imaging program (symantec livestate 6.0) to replace those partitions with the ones i imaged earlier.

What I plan to end up with is my exact same server that i imaged on my old smaller drives, but with more drive space.

If i use the win 2003 CD to just create the partitions, will it actually install the windows 2003 OS? I do not need it to do this since i will be just re-imaing anyways...
"If i use the win 2003 CD to just create the partitions, will it actually install the windows 2003 OS?"  No, you can reboot before the installation of Windows 2003 occurs...  Just shut the server off after you have carved out your partitions...  

As an alternative... use your RAID software to carve out patitions... (logical drives)
I will try the win2003 cd (i hoped there would be a cleaner way). Dell says taht the RAID software does not make parititions, i will double check this myself. I can not do this until the weekend....I will keep you updated.
Avatar of Netman66
You will create one RAID5 array and create 4 volumes on it using the RAID utility (watch for the prompt during the POST).

the RAID5 is already done via the hardware controlller. I just need to make the partitions. what is the "POST"?
POSt is the DOSy looking screen that appear when you first boot your machine.  Where is checks memory and what not...  Usually you can get into your RAID configuration utility during boot by pressing CTRL-A or some other key stroke.  Once you enter the RAID configuration utility, you can create volumes on your RAID array  (the default option, by the way, is usually to make one big volume; however, you can create your own volume sizes if you like).  You might have to look at your RAID documentation to figure out how to do this...  If this is a Dell server under a support agreement, you can call DELL support and they will talk you through this.
Hello,

Thanks for the terminology explaination. Yes, they said that the RAID configuration utlity does not do the partitions....
huh...  I have dell servers that do this...  Maybe you have an older Raid card or something...  anyway, you can use the other idea using the windows install to do this then
Hello, I eventually just used a server partitioning software to get the job done. I did not have time to fool around with other options.