Extend a boot partition on an Windows 2003 Server VM

[ESABO12]

I am new to VMware and want to know the correct procedure to extend a boot partition to a windows 2003 server VM, on researching the issues I saw multiple instructions on this topic.   If this is not the right forum please direct me on where I should posted this question.

Thanks in advance

[Troy_Clavell]

there are multiple ways of doing this... My choice is to use extpart.  However you can use a helper VM and if needed VMware Converter

...just remember to commit all snapshots before extending the disk.

[Kieper]

I second Troy's extpart suggestion.  This is the method used in official VMware training.  It's also the quickest/simplest method for extending the Windows boot volume, and can be done while the VM is powered on.

Note that the syntax for extpart requires you to specify how much space you're adding - not the total size of the extended volume.

From the Dell extpart documentation:

To extend the g: volume by 1 GB (1024 MB) use the following command:
extpart g: 1024

[ESABO12]

Thanks for all the information.      We were looking at something offical from the VMware website.     Can diskpart still be used?    Is the dell tool offical supported by VMWare and Microsoft?     What is the latest version of that tool?

[DSTAVERT]

I don't know that expanding the boot partition for 2003 is supported at all. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590

It is done every day however and is quite sucessful using  the methods previously posted.

One method is to use VMware Standalone converter to V2V your server expanding the disk in the process.

[ESABO12]

I saw a couple of blog posting where someone did say they could expand the boot partition within Windows 2003 but I just wanted to know if VMware had some offical documents on this subject.

[partitionsaver]

I'm also the fresh man here, I hope my experence could help you, In Windows 2003, you can not use disk part to increase system partition  only data partition is able, This feature is only work on Windows 2008/VISTA/WIN7, Some guys suggest convert baisk disk to dynamic disk then could extend system partition, but I tested it, it still didn't work, may be there's sth wrong, I find this article descripe useing thirdparty software to extend system partition I hope this could help you, "how to extend system partition on windows server 2003"

best regrads

[bulletprooffool]

I generally use extpart from Dell for this - dropped a blog post on this:

http://www.get-virtual.info/tag/extend/

[Walfordr]

ESABO12 wrote:

Thanks for all the information.      We were looking at something offical from the VMware website.     Can diskpart still be used?    Is the dell tool offical supported by VMWare and Microsoft?     What is the latest version of that tool?

There is no official support tool for this. You have to use what works best.  From VMware you could use converter as suggested, thats as official as it gets.

The Dell extpart works great.  I used it several times without rebooting the guest VM.  I have ran into a few situations were it would not work without a reboot though.

[DSTAVERT]

ESABO12 wrote:

Thanks for all the information.      We were looking at something offical from the VMware website.     Can diskpart still be used?    Is the dell tool offical supported by VMWare and Microsoft?     What is the latest version of that tool?

There is no official support for expanding the boot partition for a disk from any company. VMware and Dell have no part of this since this is done at the operating system level. Dell provides the expart tool but does not offer any support for it. If you need to have someone from Dell, VMware, or Microsoft to give you their blessing you probably won't get it. Expanding the boot partition is however a relatively safe procedure whatever method you choose (having good backups would be important). Your alternatives would be to create a new virtual machine from scratch, patch, configure and add your software. Take your pick.

[ElevenB2003]

You could also use GParted Live.  You simply download the ISO, mount it, boot to it, and expand your system volume.  Make sure you snapshot prior to doing this and when Windows loads for the first time after expansion it will perform a disk check.  I've used it many times and not had a single issue with it and it's extremely simple to use; simply select the volume you'd like to expand and drag the slider to expand the volume to the desired size.

[Bailifei]

u can go to the disk management, and right click the boot partition to see whether there's an "extend" option.

if there's not, u can try some third party partition tool, such as partition master, partition manager, and disk director.

i personally more like partition master because of the good features and the lower price.