How can I increase the size of a Windows 2003 NTFS partition?
Solution 1:
If it's the system partition you want to expand, as far as I know, there's no way around a reboot. Personally, I fire up a GParted Live CD [link] and resize the partition (as long as you have enough space on the disk).
If you're talking about a non-system disk, you can use diskpart.exe with no reboot. Proceed like this:
- run -> cmd
- diskpart
- list volume
- select volume (volume ID)
- extend (size) (if no size specified, it's expand to the maximum)
Solution 2:
You can convert the disk to a Dynamic Disk, add more disks to the same pool and then add a second Dynamic Volume to the C:\ partition to increase its size.
http://www.petri.co.il/difference_between_basic_and_dynamic_disks_in_windows_xp_2000_2003.htm
Solution 3:
The boot partition can be resized with Acronis Disk Director, from what I remember you do have to reboot if you re-size said partition.
Solution 4:
Moo is wrong, I've checked, even if you convert to dynamic disk, you cannot expand the system volume. Only simple volume and spanned volume can be extended, though the system is simple volume, it cannot be extended. It will cause problem worse if you convert to dynamic disk, as no software can resize it. You'd better resize the partition in basic disk. I used disk director, it is the best server partitioning tool. If others have this problem, see this tutorial, then you'll know how easy to solve this problem by resizing with disk director
Solution 5:
Use ExtPart. Free, simple and allows a live/online extend.
Has some limitations (NTFS format, Basic disk types), but even though it's a Dell driver, it works perfectly on other vendors' hardware. I've been using it to extend the disks on a bunch of legacy VMware VMs (on HP servers) for quite a while and have yet to encounter any issues.