Expand C drive during bare metal restore Server 2016

Platinum Goose

3/14/24, 2:51 AM

The C drive on our server is getting full. It's at 90% capacity and I don't have any unallocated space next to it. I was thinking of swapping out the 500 Gb hard drive for a 1 Tb hard drive. I plan to do a full metal restore. The problem is I'm not able to find any info on how to allocate drive space when doing the restore. Will it allocate the drive space like the existing hard drive and then the extra 500 Gb's will be unallocated? I watched a number of videos and I saw the following message which I assume means it will do that "All disks to be restored will be formatted and replaced with the layout and data in the system image"

If that's the case do I restore to the larger hard drive and then buy software to allow me to expand the C drive or is there a better way to do this?

1 + 0

windows

hard-drive

restore

Score:0

Server

mdmay74

3/14/24, 3:33 AM

I believe you don't need to buy extra software.

If you restore to the larger disk and it turns out to have created a 500GB filesystem, then you should be able to use Windows Administrative Tools->Computer Management to Extend the filesystem. In the Computer Management window, select Storage->Disk Management from the panel on the left, then select the appropriate Volume, right-click and choose Extend Volume.

Assuming it is an unencrypted Windows filesystem (presumably NTFS), Windows has the knowledge to extend it.

+ 4

Platinum Goose

3/14/24, 4:23 AM

That won't work because D drive is next to C. In order to extend C you need to have unallocated disk space to the right of C which I don't have.

mdmay74

3/14/24, 9:20 AM

Is your D drive also an unencrypted Windows filesystem? Can Computer Management move that to the right to make room (once you have the new image on the larger drive)? If not, then can you use another tool to copy your D drive (presumably just data) to a new filesystem at the right, then delete the current D (once you've ensured the new one is sufficient) to give you more room to expand C into? If D has a lot of data in it, then it will probably take a long time and you need to ensure that it is not interrupted part way through (power failures, etc)

Platinum Goose

3/15/24, 1:33 AM

It did leave 500 Gb of unallocated space. I created a new drive there and copied D to it. Then I deleted D and extended C into the unallocated space left by D. I left some unallocated space in case I want to extend C or D in the future.

mdmay74

3/20/24, 12:02 AM

I'm glad to hear that you were successful. It is ALWAYS good to be careful with these operations, as if you move filesystems around more often, you increase the risk of losing data (I speak from experience...)

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Expand C drive during bare metal restore Server 2016

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.