Extend your partition in Windows Server 2003

I recently had a project to upgrade the data partition on an Exchange Server. Obviously being an email server, there is no room for error. We need to make sure that the server stays running while upgrading the space on the data drive.

The server has a data drive (where the Exchange data is store) that was 120GB and getting full. The idea was to make this drive bigger. The hardware setup was a RAID 5 setup with 3 hard drives, and room for 3 more.

Basically, this depends on your raid controller. Most controllers nowadays have the option to expany your logical array using the new drives. All you do is put the hard drives in, add the 3 drives to the array (in my example I used two drives to the array and the 6th drive was setup as a  hot spare).

After this is complete, it may take a while for the controller to update, but once it is done the next step is to get Windows to recognize the new space.

Go to this web page from Microsoft.com, it is very exact and extremely simple.

This article will show you how to use diskpart.exe.

Good luck,

Tags: Tech Support, 3 drives, email server, exchange data, exchange server, hard drives, hardware setup, logical array, microsoft, partition, raid 5, raid controller, windows server

Tags: 3 drives, email server, exchange data, exchange server, hard drives, hardware setup, logical array, microsoft, partition, raid 5, raid controller, windows server