Increasig Hard drive Space

B

Brantley Allen

I have a 2 disk, dual boot system.

Drive 0 has Vista Business installed. I'm dual booting Server 2008 Standard
which is on Drive 1.

I want to increase the size of Drive 1. What is the best way to do this?

I was thinking I could boot in Vista (Drive 0) and make a full backup of
Drive 1. Upgrade Drive 1 to the large disk and then restore Drive 1 from
backup. What other method can I use?
 
N

Noel Paton

I have a 2 disk, dual boot system.

Drive 0 has Vista Business installed. I'm dual booting Server 2008 Standard
which is on Drive 1.

I want to increase the size of Drive 1. What is the best way to do this?

I was thinking I could boot in Vista (Drive 0) and make a full backup of
Drive 1. Upgrade Drive 1 to the large disk and then restore Drive 1 from
backup. What other method can I use?

IF (sic) I read you right, then there are easier ways to do this.
first, check that I DO get what you mean.

1) you have two physical HD's, one with Vista installed, and one with
Server 2008 - operating off a dual-boot menu (presumably the Server
one?)
2) You want to change the HD for Server to a larger one.
3) rather than reinstall to the larger drive, you want to clone the
existing installation to the new drive, and expand the partition to
the full drive capacity

If that's the case, then you really need a partition manager
www.bootitng.com - BootItNG (BING) - provides a tool that should be
able to accomplish what you want. - the following instructions should
work with this

a) remove the Vista HD from the system, and plug in the new HD
instead.
b) Boot to the BING partition manager console
c) Copy the partition from the Server 2008 HD to the new HD - then
c.1) expand the resulting partition to the full disk size
c.2) copy the HD ID from one disk to the other
d) shut down the PC, remove the old HD, and move the new one to the
old one's connectors.
e) reinstall the Vista HD
f) boot as normal -

with any luck your system will boot as normal, to both Vista and
Server 2008 - although you may find that one or both want to reboot
again to complete the recognition of the new HD.


HTH
 
C

Charlie Tame

Brantley said:
I have a 2 disk, dual boot system.

Drive 0 has Vista Business installed. I'm dual booting Server 2008 Standard
which is on Drive 1.

I want to increase the size of Drive 1. What is the best way to do this?

I was thinking I could boot in Vista (Drive 0) and make a full backup of
Drive 1. Upgrade Drive 1 to the large disk and then restore Drive 1 from
backup. What other method can I use?
I assume you mean that hardware drive 1 is bigger than hardware drive
0 and you want the server on the larger drive, right?

If you are using something like Acronis yes, you can make a backup of
both drives and restore them to the other drive, but you may not be able
to make a backup on the same drive (ie from drive 0 to drive 0) or to
restore to the same drive (Depends on which backup utility you are using
I guess) so I would be inclined to consider making a backup of the
smaller drive to the bigger one and then just buy another drive. I
assume also that you do have two hard disks and not just two partitions
on the same hard disk. You can probably get a good sized drive from
Geeks.com or Newegg.com cheap enough that eliminating the risk of data
loss would be worth it.

Sorry if I misunderstood anything
 
P

Patrick Keenan

Brantley Allen said:
I have a 2 disk, dual boot system.

Drive 0 has Vista Business installed. I'm dual booting Server 2008
Standard
which is on Drive 1.

I want to increase the size of Drive 1. What is the best way to do this?

I was thinking I could boot in Vista (Drive 0) and make a full backup of
Drive 1. Upgrade Drive 1 to the large disk and then restore Drive 1 from
backup. What other method can I use?

If I understand correctly that you want to install a physically larger drive
in the Drive 0 position, get the new larger hard disk, and attach it to
the system. Do not format it.

Next, download and install the Acronis TrueImage trial version. You'll
probably need to reboot after the install.

After reboot, run TrueImage in manual mode to clone the disk, and clone
Drive0 to the new, bare drive, using the proportional method so that
partitions are resized larger.

Let it run, and when it's done, power down, remove the original Drive 0, put
the new Drive 0 in its place, setting any jumpers the same. Set the old
drive aside.

Reboot; you're done. You can now uninstall the trial version, or purchase
the full license.

HTH
-pk
 
C

Chad Harris

Brantley Allen said:
I have a 2 disk, dual boot system.

Drive 0 has Vista Business installed. I'm dual booting Server 2008
Standard
which is on Drive 1.

I want to increase the size of Drive 1. What is the best way to do this?

I was thinking I could boot in Vista (Drive 0) and make a full backup of
Drive 1. Upgrade Drive 1 to the large disk and then restore Drive 1 from
backup. What other method can I use?

_______________

Hi Brantley--

It's difficult and a lot of shifting around to actually add space with Disk
Management. The partitions have to be in a certain position. This is not
the case with G-Parted Live Disk.

One important tip that many people don't tell you you need to follow for
G-Parted to actually work:

When the G-Parted Partition Screen comes up, put your mouse in the lower
right hand corner and drag it to the width of your monitor or G-Parted's
changes might refuse to apply.

After you make your changes, you have to go to the top toolbar and click
"apply".

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-gparted-to-resize-your-windows-vista-partition/

http://lifehacker.com/software/partition/download-of-the-day-gparted-live-cd-175024.php

Best,

CH
 
R

Richard Urban

The person has two separate hard drives - not two separate partitions. One
of the drives must be replaced.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience
 
C

Chad Harris

Richard Urban said:
The person has two separate hard drives - not two separate partitions. One
of the drives must be replaced.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience

Thanks--

Having read the thread a couple times, people seemed to be equally divided
as they guessed or maybe I just read it wrong. Hard drives are hard drives,
and volumes something else. I think it was the phrase
I want to increase my hard drive that through some of us or maybe it was
just me.

CH
 
C

Charlie Tame

Richard said:
The person has two separate hard drives - not two separate partitions.
One of the drives must be replaced.

That's how I read it Richard and if I wanted to do what I think the OP
wants to do I'd purchase a new drive and clone things with Acronis, but
the OP did not say what he / she planned to use so I think we were all
trying to play safe and avoid accidentally giving bad advice.
 

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