Windows Server 2003 Dasic and Dynamic Disks
I am responsible for hundreds of servers (new position) and I'm looking at server housekeeping and disk management. However, these servers are in LIVE environments and have to keep running but many are rapidly running low on disk space runnning between 95%-99% capacity. With this in mind I am struggling to even run some standard management tools such as Defrag.
Most servers have 2 partitions (C: & D:) and it is the C: drive that is running out of space. The volumes are setup as 'Basic Disks' and I would like to know if I can convert these disks to 'Dynamic Disks' and then borrow disk space from the D: drive therefore increasing the C: drive with little or no disruption.
All advice and help appreciated.
Most servers have 2 partitions (C: & D:) and it is the C: drive that is running out of space. The volumes are setup as 'Basic Disks' and I would like to know if I can convert these disks to 'Dynamic Disks' and then borrow disk space from the D: drive therefore increasing the C: drive with little or no disruption.
All advice and help appreciated.
Last Comment
Darius Ghassem
Nope you can't borrow space from another Volume or Partition this will not work. Your options are to delete things of C: drive. or move to bigger drives.
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if you convert both to dynamic you can span the disks but you would have to kill the d drive first which I assume is not an option also note that if these are seperate physical disks if one fails you lose both. I imagine they are RAID 5 though..
It is a tough place to be in, you may want to look at disk partitioning software although again your back to killing the D drive, that is if they are all part of the same physical Raid set.
Dynamic disks will give you the SPAN option if there is free space available.
You want to be heading down the virtualisation route then if you do a P2V conversion you can grow the c drive and then span the difference.
It is a tough place to be in, you may want to look at disk partitioning software although again your back to killing the D drive, that is if they are all part of the same physical Raid set.
Dynamic disks will give you the SPAN option if there is free space available.
You want to be heading down the virtualisation route then if you do a P2V conversion you can grow the c drive and then span the difference.
Add another drive and SYMLINK everything you can as an interim to get you through. You will be surpised how much disk space you cna free up with SYMLINKS
use Junction.exe
use Junction.exe
Junction are covered in the link I mentioned.
lee, sorry about that lad, didn't see it ;)
I haven't reviewed leews document, but deleting the undelete files for Windows service packs and updates can save hundreds of MB. I think that they are in C:\windows. Moving the pagefile to the D drive can help as well.
You should click the link as the summary table provides a list of 20+ things that may be applicable including removing said updates. (and I don't know why anyone who found it useful would be shy about posting it - many others here do - it's a publicly available page that I have no problem with anyone posting a link to).
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I have received this doc previously and recently so I will carry out these tasks first.
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 was based on Windows XP and was released in four editions: Web, Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter. It also had derivative versions for clusters, storage and Microsoft’s Small Business Server. Important upgrades included integrating Internet Information Services (IIS), improvements to Active Directory (AD) and Group Policy (GP), and the migration to Automated System Recovery (ASR).
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