Extend disk partition to full disk

[MikeV99]

I have a 30 GB drive which has about 15GB in use for a Win2K partition
(D: drive) and the other 15GB formatted but empty. Both are NTFS. I
would like to expand the Win2K partition to use the entire drive. I
thought about using Partition Magic, but the version I have does not
handle NTFS drives. I hate to buy the latest version for just a single
use. Does a utility exist that will accomplish what I want? I
searched, but found nothing.

Thanks.

 

[seth]

How to use Diskpart.exe to extend a data volume in Windows Server 2003, in
Windows XP, and in Windows 2000
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325590

 

[MikeV99]

The Diskpart utility has the limitation of "Only the extension of data
volumes is supported" and "You cannot extend the partition if the
system page file is located on the partition."

This is dual boot system with Win2K server on C: and Win2K Pro on D:.
I guess I could boot into the server on C: and extend D: since D:
would be a data disk to the server. I wonder; however, would problems
occur when I tried to boot back to Pro on the D: drive?

I have a Win2003 Server that only has a C: drive which I want to
expand as well if I was able to do the Win2K system. However, since it
is a system disk rather than a data disk, it would not appear to be
extendable?

Thanks for the info.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

You are highly likely to run into problems if you extend the
boot partition from a different OS. I guess that boot partitions
have certain properties that are incompatible with extended
partitions. It's like using a binary disk editor to create two
folders with identical names. The hard disk won't care but
the operating system certainly will.

A far easier and perfectly safe way would be to use a
partition manager, or to copy your OS to another partition
before resizing the current partition.

 

[MikeV99]

I am considering a Linux utility
(http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html#example) to
resize the partition. It is not really creating an extended partition
as much as it is just making the existing 15GB into a 30GB partition.
Hence, your advice about using a partition manager is consistent with
using the about utility. The nice thing about it is that one does not
need to worry about the swap file and mounted files since everything
is done via the Linux boot. The irony of it all is that the partition
I am sizing into use to contain a Red Hat 9 system.