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how to increase a mirrored drive

Hi,

It's possible increase/expand the size of a drive C of a Windows Server 2003?
I had a drive mirrored, which the C: partition it's little space left, so it's possible increase/expand that drive?
I have free space on drive D:, it's possible reduce that drive and increase the drive C: without losing data?

Thanks.

Best regards.

Lee W, MVP

Strongly recommend you look at WHAT is taking up the space before you try expanding.

Expanding is possible using third party tools like GPartEd PROVIDED your C: and D: drives are PARTITIONS on a single physical disk. HOWEVER, I RARELY recommend expanding the drive because doing so DOES present the possibility of corrupting the ENTIRE INSTALL. It's not likely, but any time you mess around with partitions, it's a possibility.

So what's taking up the space? Have you been properly backing up Exchange? Do you have the Exchange Databases on the C: drive? WSUS? Look at this items - reference my article on disk space in 2003 - www.lwcomputing.com/tips/static/bootdrivesize.asp

Philip Elder

If WSUS is installed you can move the SUSDB from C: to the other partition.

If WSUS is installed you can run the clean-up wizard under Options in the WSUS Console. On first run do all tick marks except the top one. Once that process completes run the top one. Note that this process can take DAYS.

Move your Exchange databases/folder to the other partition.

You could also swap one of the drives out for a larger one, wait for the rebuild, then swap the other one out and wait until the rebuild is done. Then, you can extend the OS partition in Disk Management. Note the risk with this one.

Make sure your backups are good!

Philip

privateuser

ASKER

Hi,

This is a Fileserver, so I don't have WSUS or nothing like that. There is a symantec console instaled on that drive and SQL Express with some DB's, but for know isn't in use.
I compressed some folders, and for mistake some from system, whe i run the compress folders options to get some space free.

I'll see what also i can move.

Thanks.

Best regards.

CompProbSolv

The others have made excellent suggestions, but I'll add one more.

I would install TreeSizeFree (from jam-software.com) on the server and run it on C:. This will show you where your disk space has gone.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Lee W, MVP

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McKnife

Apart from concerns "where the space went": you can increase the size, yes. The partitioner will have to be a third party one as 2003 server cannot expand c:\ on its own. It will have to deal with your (yet to specify) form of mirroring and having a full backup before you start is mandatory. Side note: shifting space can consume lots of time. It's recommendable to backup all partitions, delete the partition where c: should expand into and then do the job and later restore the deleted partition from backup - much quicker.