How to expand system drive by spanning to a partition on separate

[Guest]

I'm currently ruing Win XP Pro on my PC. When I installed the system, I only
allocated 20GB for the system partition. As time goes and installation
appls, the system drive disk space only has 15% disk space left. I have
another 10GB partition (d: drive) which has become available but it resides
on a separate physical hard disk.

The only option that I can think of is to uninstall the appls and reinstall
it on this spare drive to free up disk space on system drive. It involves
quite bit of work which I do not wish to do if and only if this is the only
solution.

Can I expand the system drive to include this "D:\" as part of the system
drive (single logical partition) ?

Please help.

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

The only way you can create, delete, resize or merge existing partitions,
and not harm your existing Windows installation, is to purchase and use
a third-party partitioning program such as Partition Magic 8.
http://www.symantec.com/partitionmagic/

The alternative is to perform a "Clean Install" of Windows XP.

Clean Install Windows XP
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/cleanxpinstall.html

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User
Microsoft Newsgroups

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

:

| I'm currently ruing Win XP Pro on my PC. When I installed the system, I only
| allocated 20GB for the system partition. As time goes and installation
| appls, the system drive disk space only has 15% disk space left. I have
| another 10GB partition (d: drive) which has become available but it resides
| on a separate physical hard disk.
|
| The only option that I can think of is to uninstall the appls and reinstall
| it on this spare drive to free up disk space on system drive. It involves
| quite bit of work which I do not wish to do if and only if this is the only
| solution.
|
| Can I expand the system drive to include this "D:\" as part of the system
| drive (single logical partition) ?
|
| Please help.

 

[Z]

I'm currently ruing Win XP Pro on my PC. When I installed the system, I only
allocated 20GB for the system partition. As time goes and installation
appls, the system drive disk space only has 15% disk space left. I have
another 10GB partition (d: drive) which has become available but it resides
on a separate physical hard disk.

The only option that I can think of is to uninstall the appls and reinstall
it on this spare drive to free up disk space on system drive. It involves
quite bit of work which I do not wish to do if and only if this is the only
solution.

Can I expand the system drive to include this "D:\" as part of the system
drive (single logical partition) ?

Sure, it's called a Spanned Volume.

If you can, backup the system disk BEFORE you do ANY OF THIS.

First you must convert the existing system disk to a "dynamic disk"
(there are some inherent limitations you need to consider - a dynamic
disk can't be dual boot, also it can't be a laptop/USB/firewire/shared
SCSI drive).

Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk
Management. Right click on the existing system drive > Convert to
Dynamic Disk.

In Disk Management open the Extend Volume Wizard and add the new drive
(or part of it) to the old system drive that you just converted to a
dynamic disk.

NOTE: Once you create a spanned volume, there's no going back! You can't
just remove space from it at a later time. You can only add space.

 

[Eric Bursley [MVP]]

Another alternative to using Partition Magic is to use a Knoppix CD, and use
kt-parted to expand the partition. If there is blank space after the end of
your C drive, you can also use diskpar (a Windows resource kit utility) to
expand the partition as well.
This only works if you are using the same disk. If you need to combine two
disks, you can either strip them together under Windows dynamic disk.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309044&sd=tech

 

[Guest]

Thanks Carey,

I have an older version of Partition Magic 8.01 and had never used it for
this purpose. Will this version work with Win XP Pro to merge system drive
partition with partition from other hd ?

Regards

 

[Guest]

Hi Z

With your suggestion, if later (year+) I decide to rebuild system by first
back up all data files and then resize all partitions to the size I need and
then rebuild the system ?

Regards

 

[Kerry Brown]

Hi Z

With your suggestion, if later (year+) I decide to rebuild system by first
back up all data files and then resize all partitions to the size I need
and
then rebuild the system ?

You can't extend a system volume or boot volume by spanning so this doesn't
apply in your case. You will have to use a third party tool to accomplish
what you want to do.

If it did apply then yes you could back everything up and recreate the
partitions later at whatever size you wanted then restore the data. I'm not
sure if disk imaging programs work with spanned volumes. You may be stuck
with Ntbackup.

Kerry

 

[Z]

With your suggestion, if later (year+) I decide to rebuild system by first
back up all data files and then resize all partitions to the size I need and
then rebuild the system ?

Sure, that'll work just fine.

1. Make a full backup, _including_System_State_ and save the .bkf
somewhere safe (e.g.: a CD/DVD or another hard drive or partition that's
not going to be used for the new system disk)

2. Repartition and reformat your disks during the preliminary steps of a
reinstallation of Windows

3. Boot to the new Windows installation and restore the full backup over
the top of the new installation.


Unfortunately, there's no way to restore a Windows backup when booted to
the Windows console on the CD. If there was, you could skip the
reinstallation of Windows in Step 2 and save a few hours of unnecessary
work.

 

[Z]

You can't extend a system volume or boot volume by spanning so this doesn't
apply in your case. You will have to use a third party tool to accomplish
what you want to do.

Hmm, I searched Help and Support on microsoft.com but I can't find that
limitation stated anywhere. Do you have a URL to a MS KB article that
says you can't make a system disk a spanned volume?

This article
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314343 makes no
such mention of that limitation.

 

[Kerry Brown]

Hmm, I searched Help and Support on microsoft.com but I can't find that
limitation stated anywhere. Do you have a URL to a MS KB article that says
you can't make a system disk a spanned volume?

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/dm_extend_volume.mspx

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308424/

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/proddocs/dm_extend_volume.mspx

Kerry

 

[Z]

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308424/

NOTE:
• You cannot extend the system or boot volume.

Thanks.

 

[Kerry Brown]

NOTE:
• You cannot extend the system or boot volume.

Thanks.

Your welcome.

Kerry

 

[Guest]

Thanks for all of you's help and reference to KB articles. I'll digest them
and decide what is the best course of action.

Have a great day/evening.