Resizing partition on Server disks becomes the daily operations when Server starts to provide more reactions and data transfer services, C Drive, the system partition, is the one always runs out space and show low disk space warning. In this page we’ll guide through resizing Server C Drive with Server Disk Manager Disk Management and Third-party Server disk partition manager Partition Expert Server.
Although we’re using Windows Server 2016 to resize C Drive, this guide works on other Windows Server systems like Server 2012, 2008 and even Server 2003.
The disk we’re testing is Basic Disk not Dynamic Disk, which has different methods to approach the same purpose.
Run Disk Management from the shortcut Windows + R and type diskmgmt.msc
, press enter to open Disk Management. Then:
The Shrink Volume function is always used to create unallocated space which will be the source free space for creating new volume or extending volume on Dynamic disk.
Unallocated space created by shrinking volume on a basic disk can’t be used for extending volume ahead of the partition shrank. Simple explanation: The idea of shrinking D Drive for extending C Drive is not gonna work on a basic disk.
Download the Server Edition of Partition Expert, directly run the software from the portable package, click Yes to the UAC dialog and:
What’s the difference between Disk Management and Partition Expert?
Well, take shrink volume for example, the shrinking effect is more vivid and intuitive, the speeding of shrink is faster.
To active the Extend Volume option, please make sure there’s continuous unallocated space after C Drive, or the Extend Volume feature will be grayed out. If the option is clickable, then:
Choose Extend Volume and follow the Extend Volume Wizard to extend C Drive
If there’s no unallocated space on the disk, the only way to create it is to delete the partition next C Drive, mostly it’s D Drive, so backup D Drive and delete it, then the entire D Drive becomes unallocated space. Then we are free to extend C Drive.
When D Drive has large capacity and extending volume on C Drive only took little of the free space, the rest of it can be used to create D Drive again.
Extend Volume in Partition Expert is easy, that’s why we develop this program, resize and move without data loss.
In Partition Expert, there’s no need to delete a partition and make space unallocated, remember the Shrinking step, right? You can create unallocated space with this feature and move D Drive without deleting.
How to move D Drive?