Windows Partitions and new free space

Folks:
I am trying to understand partitions and how to keep on top on ways to expanded my data; however, I am a network engineer who has been thrown into System administration so hang in there with me.

Is there a way to keep expanding my hard drive space when I add a new drive? For example can I build a RAID level 5 or some other level, and level some space free. I think this is called extended partition, and allocate the new hard drive to the extended partitions as a logical drive.

I am running out of space on one of my servers, so I want to learn what the best way to address future growth without having to rebuild the system. Unfortunately I realized I have to rebuild the system at this point, but how should I partition my drives/RAID to address the capabilities for future growth without having to rebuild the box again.

Thank you,
E

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Comments

dynamik

Probably the best/easiest thing you can do in such circumstances is to mount a partition on a directory. For example, suppose you only have your c:\ partition, and you're running out of space because c:\data is filling up the drive. You could back everything up from that partition, mount a new drive/partition to c:\data, and then restore the data back to that. Anything under c:\data will actually be stored on the new drive/partition you added and will not actually be on the system drive, despite appearing there in the directory hierarchy. You could also use dynamic disks to expand volumes, but those are kind of finicky, and I think you'd be better off with mounts.

How to create and use NTFS mounted drives in Windows XP and in Windows Server 2003
Dynamic disks and volumes: Storage Services; File and Storage Services

e24ohm

dynamik wrote: »

Probably the best/easiest thing you can do in such circumstances is to mount a partition on a directory. For example, suppose you only have your c:\ partition, and you're running out of space because c:\data is filling up the drive. You could back everything up from that partition, mount a new drive/partition to c:\data, and then restore the data back to that. Anything under c:\data will actually be stored on the new drive/partition you added and will not actually be on the system drive, despite appearing there in the directory hierarchy. You could also use dynamic disks to expand volumes, but those are kind of finicky, and I think you'd be better off with mounts.

How to create and use NTFS mounted drives in Windows XP and in Windows Server 2003
Dynamic disks and volumes: Storage Services; File and Storage Services

thanks mate...cheers!!!

jibbajabba

Actually I would rather use the Raid5 array for storage .. keep it a seperate drive from the boot volume. Then all you have to do is extending the array on the controller and use a command line tool called "diskpart" to extend the partition ...

Example :

Before the resize (Note Drive G with 40GB)

Now I extended the array by another 40GB .. you see now free space at the end of the disk

Now after using diskpart - you can see that the volume is now 80GB

dynamik

Yep, that's a good solution if it's possible. Sometimes things aren't initially setup the greatest, and you need to find a way to make things work with what you're given (which sounds like the situation he was in).

jibbajabba

dynamik wrote: »

Yep, that's a good solution if it's possible. Sometimes things aren't initially setup the greatest, and you need to find a way to make things work with what you're given (which sounds like the situation he was in).

I understood he has to rebuild the server anyway