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How to undo a Windows 2003 boot partition

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by kbrindle2002

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I screwed up, I partioned a hard drive and now the user is running out of disk space. It is a dynamic boot disk so I am not sure diskpart will help me.

Any ideas?

Thanks
KB

8 replies

by bcpgm

Norton Ghost 2003 supports 2003 Server and dynamic disk.

Make a bootable Ghost floppy and boot from it. Ghost from the current HD to a HD and resize each partition the way you want.

However, you can ghost Dynamic HD only to Basic. You have to convert to dynamic once you boot from the ghosted HD.

by spam killer

Yes, ghost to backup and restore is one method, there is no software that can resize dynamic volume directly.

Another way is copying the dynamic volume to another basic disk,, when you copying, you can resize the partions at the same time. After that you can the target disk immediatly without restoring, more quickly, safe, too.
see http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/copy-dynamic-volume.htm
If the disk is basic, it is very easy to solve, see this guide http://www.partition-tool.com/resource/repartition-server.htm

by annvv

I have approximately the same problem and would like to inquire if the strategy worked...

by steffdudek

As no one else has replied I will. Have just carried out the following where the Old Hard Disk partition nearly full. Attached new HDD as Slave. Booted from a Ghost Floppy (Ghost 2003). Run Disk to Disk to create mirror image to larger new disk/partition. Turned off machine. Disconnected original master and made slave the new master. Rebooted machine - all OK.
Doing similar to client Server on Monday if you want step by step instructions let me know. steffdudek@sd2u.co.uk

by dilippatel

I have a similar problem on my SCSI Raid 5 configuration, and need to increase my C drive partition size.
Looks like this will for my server.
Could you please send me a step by step instructions

Thanks

by annvv

I solved my problem already too, but in a different manner. Many resize utilities can't deal with dynamic disks, but Partition Manager 8.5 can, by reverting them to basic disks. This worked pretty slick for me, running it from a boot disk, except that the box was a DC and I had an AD issue thereafter with a little more work to force who was the authority and/or convince Windows it was OK. In hindsight I should have demoted it in the first place. My interest in Ghost was based in trying to be cheap and not purchase another utility.

by annvv

The folks behind PartitionManager were great about helping me throught he same thing, and I found the software very straightforward and intuitive. I would recommend calling them. If you have a demo version, it is not fully functional to actually do anything, and you will have to buy one anyhow.

One tip I would remind is to leave yourself a "go back" path. I had a simple mirror, and failed one of the drives to make sure I could go back to it if it all went south.

Also, watch out for the roles the server plays with respect to going back. I ran into an issue because the box was a DC with all the master roles, and it went a bit dumb when I reverted back to the original - the timing of replication between two DCs got off.

I would suggest that if you use much Group Policy, or the box is a DC, do some prep work to simplify (remove from potentially conflicting policy(s), transfer away any master roles, and depromo from being a DC). Again, the process itself does not need this - it is for the "IF" that you abandon the process and need to revert back to a failed mirror like I did.

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