While the days of expensive storage are (thankfully) long
gone, the task of managing storage hasn’t disappeared along with the high costs.
And, somehow, administrators always seem to be just a gigabyte shy of what they
need in order to fulfill a particular task’s requirements.
No matter how you run your environment, it’s highly likely
that the day will come when you need to add space to an existing volume. For
example, say you’ve removed another volume on the disk or array, and you want
to use that space for your remaining volume.
There are a variety of ways to accomplish this. For example,
if you have a large RAID array or you have a storage area network, and you want
to make a volume larger, you could blow the volume away, expand it into the
additional space, and then re-create it from a tape backup. Keep in mind that
this method works only if you intend to expand an existing volume using space
that’s on the same physical hard drive or array.
Another option is to take advantage of the new Diskpart.exe
utility that comes standard with Windows Server 2003. This utility allows you
to create, delete, and manage partitions on your hard drive.
To use Diskpart.exe, follow these steps:
- Open
a command prompt by going to Start | Run. - Enter
diskpart in the Open text box,
and press [Enter]. - At
the DISKPART prompt, enter list
volume. Listing A provides
an example of the results. - Enter
select volume x, where x is the volume number listed that
you want to expand. - Enter
extend, and press [Enter].
When you’re finished, use the Disk Management snap-in to check
out your new volume. It should now take up the rest of the available space on
the device.
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