increase C drive size

[a***@hotmail.com]

Hi,
A 2003 SBS server is setup with a 6G C drive and the rest assigned to D
drive for data. Now, the whole C drive is used up and there is no room
left on it! (I didn't set it up, honest! I usually use 12G for C
drive.)
Is there a way of increasing the drive size short of re-installation?
They are not using the Exchange feature of the server, nor the
SharePoint!

Thanks.

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Hi,
A 2003 SBS server is setup with a 6G C drive and the rest assigned to
D drive for data. Now, the whole C drive is used up and there is no
room left on it! (I didn't set it up, honest! I usually use 12G for C
drive.)
Is there a way of increasing the drive size short of re-installation?
They are not using the Exchange feature of the server, nor the
SharePoint!
Thanks.

What kind of drives, and what kind of configuration are they using?

[Kerry Brown]

Many ways. 3rd party partitioning software. Install a new larger drive and
restore your backups to the new drive. Use disk imaging software, wipe the
drive and restore the images to new partitions. Whatever you do backup
first. 12 GB is probably too small as well.
--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Hi,
A 2003 SBS server is setup with a 6G C drive and the rest assigned to
D drive for data. Now, the whole C drive is used up and there is no
room left on it! (I didn't set it up, honest! I usually use 12G for C
drive.)
Is there a way of increasing the drive size short of re-installation?
They are not using the Exchange feature of the server, nor the
SharePoint!
Thanks.

[Garth H]

Kerry is spot on. 12GB is WAY too small. If you really feel you MUST use
that drive, then make it your pagefile disk.

Step 1 Backup
Step 2 Create an image of the whole drive with Drive Image / Ghost or
something of the sort
Step 3 remove the micro drive, and replace with new 200GB drive
Step 4 Use your disk image application and put it on your new drive with
bigger partitions this time.

If you just need a band-aid, get partition magic or something like that
and resize your partitions until you can replace the drive.

IMHO, the time it takes to back that drive up and move partitions, you'd
almost be done installing a new disk.

[Tim Barrett]

Vlad just blogged this weekend about a free tool to resize NTFS partitions:
http://www.vladville.com/2006/06/ntfs-partitioning-tool.html

It's a an ISO that you download and burn on CD.

[a***@hotmail.com]

Thanks a lot for all the replies.
It seems I will have to follow Kerry/Garth solution and use Ghost to
image the drive and restor it on the new hard drive.
I will use the "gparted" on a test machine to see how it works. Thanks
for the info and the link.

Post by Garth H
Kerry is spot on. 12GB is WAY too small. If you really feel you MUST use
that drive, then make it your pagefile disk.
Step 1 Backup
Step 2 Create an image of the whole drive with Drive Image / Ghost or
something of the sort
Step 3 remove the micro drive, and replace with new 200GB drive
Step 4 Use your disk image application and put it on your new drive with
bigger partitions this time.
If you just need a band-aid, get partition magic or something like that
and resize your partitions until you can replace the drive.
IMHO, the time it takes to back that drive up and move partitions, you'd
almost be done installing a new disk.
--
Garth H
Microsoft Certified Professional
Macromedia Certified Developer

[Kerry Brown]

Let us know how gparted works. It sounds interesting.
--
Kerry
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Thanks a lot for all the replies.
It seems I will have to follow Kerry/Garth solution and use Ghost to
image the drive and restor it on the new hard drive.
I will use the "gparted" on a test machine to see how it works. Thanks
for the info and the link.

Post by Garth H
Kerry is spot on. 12GB is WAY too small. If you really feel you MUST
use that drive, then make it your pagefile disk.
Step 1 Backup
Step 2 Create an image of the whole drive with Drive Image / Ghost or
something of the sort
Step 3 remove the micro drive, and replace with new 200GB drive
Step 4 Use your disk image application and put it on your new drive
with bigger partitions this time.
If you just need a band-aid, get partition magic or something like
that and resize your partitions until you can replace the drive.
IMHO, the time it takes to back that drive up and move partitions,
you'd almost be done installing a new disk.
--
Garth H
Microsoft Certified Professional
Macromedia Certified Developer

[Tim Barrett]

Results: I ran Gparted (Gnome Partition Editor) last night on a SBS 2003 box with SATA RAID 1, and it worked flawlessly. I resized the data drive partition to allow for a new pagefile partition. The entire operation (excluding the backups) took less than 15 minutes. Nice tool to have in your bag of tricks!

-Tim Barrett
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft Small Business Specialist
Website: http://www.NoGeekLeftBehind.com

[Kerry Brown]

Post by Tim Barrett
Results: I ran Gparted (Gnome Partition Editor) last night on a SBS
2003 box with SATA RAID 1, and it worked flawlessly. I resized the
data drive partition to allow for a new pagefile partition. The
entire operation (excluding the backups) took less than 15 minutes.
Nice tool to have in your bag of tricks!
-Tim Barrett
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft Small Business Specialist
Website: http://www.NoGeekLeftBehind.com

Thanks for the feedback. I'll have to give it a try.

[Tammy]

Hi there....

I can relate - except that my C:\ drive is actually 12GB (pre-installed SBS
from Dell) and I am just below 1GB on one of our servers!

I downloaded this document from Micrsoft called "Moving Data Folders for
Windows Small Business Server 2003". I have done a few parts already and
will finish the rest in the evening one night this week. FYI...I recently
install SP1 and there are now two large ISA log files on my C:\ drive and I
am looking into what I can do about this.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sbs/2003/maintain/movedata.mspx

Good luck!
Tammy

Post by a***@hotmail.com
Hi,
A 2003 SBS server is setup with a 6G C drive and the rest assigned to D
drive for data. Now, the whole C drive is used up and there is no room
left on it! (I didn't set it up, honest! I usually use 12G for C
drive.)
Is there a way of increasing the drive size short of re-installation?
They are not using the Exchange feature of the server, nor the
SharePoint!
Thanks.

[j***@gmail.com]

Hey,

I know this thread has exist for a long time, but I thinks there are still many people looking for a flexible way that could help re-sizing partition rather than use build in disk management, and Partition Magic is out of date, so there is a freeware AOMEI Partition Assistant Lite edition which could resize the partition smoothly, you can learn more: http://www.disk-partition.com/AOMEI-special-offer-10.html