How to Extend/Expand Primary Partition on a RAID 5 Array for Windows 2003?

Why extend primary partition on RAID 5 Array

As one of the most famous RAID levels, RAID 5 stripes both data and parity information across three or more drives, for this highlight, more and more SBS administrators join the RAID 5 camp. In the meantime, most SBS administrators face the same problem. How to extend primary partition on RAID 5 array when the primary partition running out of space, especially Windows Server 2003 system partition. For example:

"I have a SBS 2003 standard server with 3 SCSI disks in RAID 5. I need to install SP1 and SP2 but it short on disk space on C. On another partition, there's enough space so I'm thinking about resizing the partitions. Take some space from partition F and add it to partition C."

In this typical situation, the best solution is not to repartition but resize RAID. As we know a RAID 5 array is consisted of at least three disks, therefore, repartition RAID 5 array is a time-waster. On Windows Server 2003, the built-in Disk Management doesn't like Windows 7/Vista/2008. There's no resize feature, and the diskpart.exe could only extend data partition. In order to solve this problem, we could only resort to third-party partition software such as: Partition Assistant Server Edition or Norton Partition Magic, etc.

How to expand RAID 5 array with reliable partition software

Among the partition software, Partition Magic must be the most famous one, however, for some reason; Partition Magic could not work on Windows Server OS. By contrast, Partition Assistant Server Edition seems better. It could support all Windows OS and it could not only assist you to extend primary partition on RAID 5 Array, but also resize partition, copy partition, clone disk on RAID 5 array. The following section will take Partition Assistant Server Edition as tutorial to show "how to extend primary partition on RAID 5 array".

Step1: Launch Partition Assistant Server, select drive D and drag left handle rightwards.

Step2: After step1, you can get an unallocated space behind primary partition (C drive), select C drive and drag the right handle rightwards to add the unallocated space into C drive.

Finally, don't forget to click "Apply" on the toolbar to achieve partition resize on hardware RAID 5.

Now you could Free Download this partition software to extend primary partition on RAID 5 array for Windows Server 2003.

Tips: For Enterprise users, Unlimited Edition provides unlimited usage within one company to save money, namely, you can install it on multiple machines in your company to maximize business productivity whilst minimizing the total cost of management.

Related Articles:

1. Two Ways to Resize a Windows Server 2003 Partition without Reinstallation
2. Extend System Partition in Windows Server 2003 Easily and Safely
3. Can I Extend C Drive for Windows Server 2003 with Diskpart Command-Line?
4. Step by Step Tutorial: Extend Boot Partition/Volume on Windows 2003 Server
5. Extend NTFS System Partition on Windows 2003/2008 without Rebooting