Extend System Volume On Dynamic Disk under Windows Server 2003

Windows built-in Disk Management allows users to extend Simple Volume and Spanned Volume from Windows Server 2003, however, following operations are not impossible:

1. Extend System Volume/ Boot Volume.

2. Expand Mirror Volume.

3. Increase Stripped Volume.

4. Extend RAID5 Volume.

In this way, some reliable dynamic disk partition software will be helpful.

Certainly, there are some software in the market which can convert dynamic disk (Simple Volume only) directly to basic disk to extend windows server dynamic volume on Server 2003, while it will expose your system or data to a larger risk with no doubt, if there is an error or failure during the converting. If you want to extend dynamic system volume on Windows Server 2003 without data loss, with the copy dynamic volume function you can easily achieve this. You can use EASEUS Partition Master copy dynamic volume to basic disk firstly, and then extends the system partition on basic directly. If you still need to use dynamic volume, you can convert the basic disk back to dynamic in Disk Management again.

How to extend dynamic system volume on Windows Server 2003

EASEUS Partition Master Server Edition may help you realize both copy and extend dynamic system volume problems to solve low disk, backup or disk replacement problems. Just free download a trial version to have a test now.

To extend dynamic system volume on Server 2003, you can clone dynamic system volume to basic disk first, and then extends the system partition on basic directly. There is how:

1. Install the demo version, open it and find a main board:

2. Find the copy dynamic system volume function in the tool bar: click Wizard -> Copy Dynamic Volume

3. EASEUS Partition Master will list all existing volumes. Select the dynamic system volume that you want to clone and click "Next".

4. Select an unallocated space on a basic disk and click "Next".

5. Extend the destination partition, you can drag the borderline to extend the system partition or drag the central place to move the partition. Click Finish and Apply to complete dynamic system disk copy and partition resize.

6. Click "Apply" button and tick the check-box in the pop-up window.

7. Replace the source dynamic disk that contains the system volume with the destination basic disk, and then boot the computer. (You may see the copy of C: partition has been extended.)

8. Convert the basic disk back to dynamic.

9. You may see that the system volume has been extended successfully in the Disk Management tool.

For different volume types, the situations are different when converting basic disk back to dynamic:

Simple Volume

After copying the Simple Volume to a basic disk, you can resize the partition. You may also convert it back to Simple Volume in Disk Management after this operation.

Mirror Volume

If you want to convert the Mirror Volume back after being copied and resized on the basic disk, you can convert it to Simple Volume in Disk Management first, then adding mirror with another dynamic disk.

Striped/Spanned/RAID5 Volume

If you want to convert them back to dynamic volumes after being copied and resized on the basic disk, these volumes should be converted to Simple Volume or Mirror Volume.

Tips:

1. This feature works under Windows only, and it is not supported under bootable CD but WinPE based bootable CD.

2. The source volume should be FAT or NTFS file system.

3. If the source volume is the system boot volume, please make sure there is no boot partition on the destination disk, otherwise the system on destination partition may fail to boot after copy.

4. The destination disk should be larger than the used space of source dynamic volume.