Solved Managing Partitions, Server 2012

[Alex Sage]

Disk 1 is a old P2V disk, and as you can see, it still has the OS install on the front of the drive.

What's the best way to delete the first 2 partitions on Disk 1 and Expand the partition so it uses the whole drive?

[A Former User]

Why didn't you just copy the data over to a new virtual disk without an OS install.

[Alex Sage]

@thecreativeone91 said:

Why didn't you just copy the data over to a new virtual disk without an OS install.

Done before I worked here

[Alex Sage]

Here is what it looks like after I extended the D drive.

Still need to remove the partition on the front of the drive.

[scottalanmiller]

Is it that the deletion process just is not working and it does nothing?

[Alex Sage]

@scottalanmiller No, I can delete them no problem.

The problem is that the free space is on the front of the drive. So the partition has to be moved to the beginning of the drive, then expanded.

[Dashrender]

@anonymous said:

@scottalanmiller No, I can delete them no problem.

The problem is that the free space is on the front of the drive. So the partition has to be moved to the beginning of the drive, then expanded.

Is that a problem with the way windows deals with expanding? I know many other tools don't care and can move the partition anywhere you want to put it - of course you want rock solid backups first.

[scottalanmiller]

@anonymous said:

@scottalanmiller No, I can delete them no problem.

The problem is that the free space is on the front of the drive. So the partition has to be moved to the beginning of the drive, then expanded.

I don't think that the partition can be expanded forward. I believe that that is a limitation in the Windows volume manager. Expanding forward is a lot more technically complicated than just expanding.

[scottalanmiller]

@Dashrender said:

@anonymous said:

@scottalanmiller No, I can delete them no problem.

The problem is that the free space is on the front of the drive. So the partition has to be moved to the beginning of the drive, then expanded.

Is that a problem with the way windows deals with expanding? I know many other tools don't care and can move the partition anywhere you want to put it - of course you want rock solid backups first.

Moving the partition while retaining the filesystem?

[scottalanmiller]

What about just taking a backup and restoring?

[A Former User]

@scottalanmiller said:

What about just taking a backup and restoring?

That's what I'd do.

[scottalanmiller]

This is just data, right? It's not the booting partition?

[Dashrender]

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

@anonymous said:

@scottalanmiller No, I can delete them no problem.

The problem is that the free space is on the front of the drive. So the partition has to be moved to the beginning of the drive, then expanded.

Is that a problem with the way windows deals with expanding? I know many other tools don't care and can move the partition anywhere you want to put it - of course you want rock solid backups first.

Moving the partition while retaining the filesystem?

Yes, Acronis Disk Manager can do this (or at least could in the past). Though I see he has Dynamic Disks, it might not work with them.

[scottalanmiller]

@Dashrender you have to have Dynamic Disks to do this in Windows using MS tools.

[Dashrender]

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender you have to have Dynamic Disks to do this in Windows using MS tools.

Sure, but you don't when using third party tools. Again, I haven't done it in 4+ years, so I don't know what Acronis can currently do.