Tutorial: How to resize the system drive to make C more than 20G.

Saturday, July 07, 2007 9:31 PM

2

I've been lucky enough to find workarounds for most of the problems that spring from MS locking WHS down too much. Now I've managed to resize my C drive and while it's not pretty, or free, it worked for me. YMMV

What you need:
WHS
Paragon Partition Manager 8.5 Enterprise Server Edition Recovery CD.
Time (lots of time)

What I used to do: (no longer recommended)
01) Install WHS and upgrade drivers, etc. (don't fill up your shares yet)
02) Boot to the Paragon Recovery CD
03) Select the Low-Graphics Safe Mode option.
04) Select Partition Manager 8.5
05) Select the D drive and double click Resize/Move
06) Resize the D drive smaller (leave the free space "before" the partition), to allow more space on C
07) Select the C drive and double click Resize/Move
08) Resize the C drive to use the free space
09) Click Apply and wait...and wait.
10) Wait some more...until finished.

NOTE: I thought the process was frozen because it was SO slow resizing D but tapping the Caps Lock key showed that it was still working. It took several hours to complete steps 9 and 10 on one of my WHS servers.

Known bug(s): (fixed below) I've only found one minor bug, so far. The WHS Console still reports 20G for the system drive (hard coded?) and it doesn't notice the missing 80G from D so I'll have to pay attention to free space. That isn't a problem, for me, because I like to keep plenty of free space on my machines, so they're never very full.

It's also been suggested that the best time to resize is interrupting the install after the textmode portion of the install but I never tried it. I'm confidant that there are other partition utilities that may work. All I had available, that did work, was PPM 8.5 ES, if other people have success, with other utilities, feel free to post them here.

Hope that helps...

EDIT:
After breaking my array and starting another clean install, I tried the interrupted resize method and I've revised the tutorial for simplicity.

What to do now:
01) Begin installing WHS, interrupting the install after the textmode (F6) portion finishes copying files and reboots.
02) Boot to the Paragon Recovery CD
03) Select the Low-Graphics Safe Mode option.
04) Select Partition Manager 8.5
05) Select the C drive and double click Resize/Move
06) Resize the C drive to use the free space desired
07) Click Apply and wait until finished.
08) Put the WHS install DVD back in the drive and reboot to contine installing as normal.

Note:
This fixes my only "known bug" from resizing. YMMV.
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Saturday, July 07, 2007 10:36 PM

0

Good find there, SME.

Yes, been using Paragon utilities for ages now, I trusted it more than Partition Magic with ntfs system in the case of resize/restore partitions issue. they have others programs as well.

My best.
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Saturday, July 07, 2007 11:05 PM

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My question is why? Why would you want to resize the system partition? I'd rather see WHS be able to use a separate HD for the OS and leave the resizing stuff to people that want to purposley destroy their server setup.

One thing you can bet for sure, there will be plenty of tech support requests to help out now......

Cruise
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Saturday, July 07, 2007 11:08 PM

abobader wrote:

Good find there, SME.

Yes, been using Paragon utilities for ages now, I trusted it more than Partition Magic with ntfs system in the case of resize/restore partitions issue. they have others programs as well.

My best.

I would have preferred Partition Magic but the version I have doesn't support win2k3sbs but whatever works.

Saturday, July 07, 2007 11:17 PM

Cruiseman wrote:

My question is why? Why would you want to resize the system partition? I'd rather see WHS be able to use a separate HD for the OS and leave the resizing stuff to people that want to purposley destroy their server setup.

One thing you can bet for sure, there will be plenty of tech support requests to help out now......

Cruise

It's not rocket science, it's for more space. I don't care what you'd rather have, I care about what I'd rather have. While a separate HDD would be a nice option, that's not something I can tweak. *This* tutorial explains how to resize, because that's what *can* be done and my server setup is NOT destroyed so you can drop the drama-queen act.

If people choose to resize their drives that's up to them, it's not supported and they'll get no support if they do. If MS would allow us more flexibility and options, such unsupported measures wouldn't be needed. They're trying to "rob Sam to pay Peter" so to speak. This is my way around it. You don't have to like the fact that some people will resize nor do you have to resize your own WHS.

Hope that helped...

EDIT:
If you want to debate the practice, try here: http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsHomeServer/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1824472&SiteID=50

Sunday, July 08, 2007 8:57 PM

You didn't answer the question of why you need to resize the OS partition other than to say "it's for more space", but again, I'm trying to figure out why you need more OS space. Your server may not be destroyed, and I'm not doing the drama queen act, just trying again, to figure out why you would want to take the chance and what good it would do. It seems to me, SME, you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder. Not ony from this reply from you, but numerous others I've read.

Take a happy pill and relax. And, no, I don't want to debate your practices, so don't play drama queen with me.

Cruise

Sunday, July 08, 2007 9:04 PM

Cruiseman wrote:

Take a happy pill and relax. And, no, I don't want to debate your practices, so don't play drama queen with me.

Cruise

It's none of your business what I'm putting on my WHS and you don't have to like my replies. If you want to discuss this further, please stop hijacking my tutorial and move to the thread I posted.

Monday, July 09, 2007 9:33 PM

Moderator

SME wrote:

Known bug(s): I've only found one minor bug, so far. The WHS Console still reports 20G for the system drive (hard coded?) and it doesn't notice the missing 80G from D so I'll have to pay attention to free space. That isn't a problem, for me, because I like to keep plenty of free space on my machines, so they're never very full.

It would worry me a bit though. Would be interesting to see what happens if you duplicate folders, run backups and, restore full /partial backups.

I agree that it would be convenient to have some more space on SYS drive. I 've been using different PM (EDIT: I mean Partition Magic which will probably not run on WHS system, so not the one SME uses which does support MS server OS) versions for most of my conscious live, however never seen something like this. ATM I have only a single system free for WHS, and I don't want to mess around to much with it. However perhaps with a next release or with RTM I think I'll also have a look at it.

OK, just had a quick look. I think after changing sizes with PM you 'll have to go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows Home Server\Storage Manager\Volumes

and change the values according to your new volume sizes.

In general I would say that the windows registry and policy editors will give you most of the flexibility you need, also with WHS

Monday, July 09, 2007 9:55 PM

brubber wrote:

SME wrote:

It would worry me a bit though. Would be interesting to see what happens if you duplicate folders, run backups and, restore full /partial backups.

I agree that it would be convenient to have some more space on SYS drive. I 've been using different PM versions for most of my conscious live, however never seen something like this. ATM I have only a single system free for WHS, and I don't want to mess around to much with it. However perhaps with a next release or with RTM I think I'll also have a look at it.

Well, I do have replicated files but I haven't connected another client to it because I have another WHS (stock(except for password tweaks)) that I've been backing up to. I haven't attempted any restores because I haven't had the time to use Ghost to image any of the workstations before attempting. I won't trust a beta backup/restore app without a surefire backup available. So far that's still the only bug I've found and somebody did say that 20G was a hard limit, maybe the 20G is hardcoded into the Console? In fact, I just checked my event viewer and the "stretched" WHS has less warnings and errors than the stock one. Evidently my XP-PRO WS thinks it's the master browser, which generated one warning and w32time couldn't sync last night. No big deal, I use a VBS script and task scheduler to set my clocks more often anyway. I haven't had time to re-install the apps I want, but I'll get to it eventually.

Monday, July 09, 2007 10:01 PM

Moderator

Just check my previous post, made some additions that may be interesting for you. It's also in the registry (just like the pwd tweaks)

Monday, July 09, 2007 10:10 PM

brubber wrote:

Just check my previous post, made some additions that may be interesting for you. It's also in the registry (just like the pwd tweaks)

I saw that but I'm not sure that I want to change those values manually because I'm not sure what the wrong data might do. Since the data is already wrong, it shouldn't hurt anything but I'm not willing to risk another re-install to test that yet.

Monday, July 09, 2007 10:51 PM

Moderator

You're probably right not to change it to quickly. Taking a closer look makes me think there's at least one more value to change, the offset for the second (and other partitions on the same drive if they have changed) in bytes. The offset for the SYS partition is given as 32256 which is exactly 63 sectors. You 'll find this value in volume key referring to the physical disk the volume is on.

However it does me think that storage manager will probably start messing up data in your current config anyway unless it uses these values only for calculation of free space and the like. Probably nothing really bad will happen as long as the important files remain in the diskparts originally reserved for the 20G SYS partition.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007 2:26 AM

brubber wrote:

I wish I knew but my stock WHS box is now crashing and the resized one seems pretty stable. Perhaps I'll interrupt the next install to resize (after F6 text mode copy finishes) and see if the registry gets the right value during the WHS setup portion to avoid manually editing the sizes.

Friday, July 13, 2007 8:58 PM

As an update, I've now completed a few automatic backups and added 153G (replicated) which balanced fine and still the only issue I see, so far, is the misreported space. I'm starting to think that those registry values are only for the WHS console and might be OK to edit. I'd rather somebody from the WHS team weighed in but this is unsupported so I understand if they don't want to clarify.

Saturday, July 14, 2007 5:35 AM

I applaud your efforts to tweak the system to work as you need it to work, but let me tell ya... I -won't- be trying -this- out! LOL! Guess I'm too meek when it comes to messin' about with the core functionality of WHS. Good luck, though. For real.

Lang

Saturday, July 14, 2007 7:45 AM

Lang Murphy wrote:

Lang

This isn't for the for the faint of heart, I hosed one box trying a different way to resize but that method didn't make this tutorial of course. I hope my example of what can be done on a resized system will encourage the WHS team to give us more options, or more space at the very least.

I've also installed more apps and I've now used 18.1G on my C drive so I'm glad that I have 80+G free.

My WHS is also now a functioning PVR (runs as a service) with support for saving to and playing from the network shares. While I don't own a HDTV, yet, it has a sw client that allows me to watch live or recorded TV, videos, photos and music from my XP workstation. Additional options include wired/wireless TV adapters that turn any TV into a wifi/networked client. While I only have one tuner in it for now, my current PVR has 2 more that I can add later. I think I feel a new tutorial or two coming in the future.

Thursday, July 19, 2007 4:07 AM

Another update, good news, Bezalel Geretz reports that performing a server re-install on a resized drive changes the registry values to report the proper sizes, without changing the drive back to 20G.

My next clean install, I'll interrupt the install instead of waiting for the install to finish. I'm tempted to do the server re-install now but I'm not having problems with the misreported values so I might wait until the RTM eval shows up.

EDIT:
After breaking my array and starting another clean install, I tried the interrupted resize method and I've revised the tutorial for simplicity.

What to do now:
01) Begin installing WHS, interrupting the install after the textmode (F6) portion finishes copying files and reboots.
02) Boot to the Paragon Recovery CD
03) Select the Low-Graphics Safe Mode option.
04) Select Partition Manager 8.5
05) Select the C drive and double click Resize/Move
06) Resize the C drive to use the free space desired
07) Click Apply and wait until finished.
08) Put the WHS install DVD back in the drive and reboot to contine installing as normal.

Note:
This also fixes my only "known bug" from resizing, other than being unsupported, of course. YMMV.

Friday, November 13, 2009 10:47 PM

I recently built a new WHS using one of Intel's latest MBs (DG41TY). I found two locations where you can read how to re-partition the system drive. Here and at http://wiki.wegotserved.com/index.php?title=Create_Large_System_Partition_for_Windows_Home_Server. They both describe pretty much the same steps.

Initially I wanted to create a 300Gb sys partition on a 1Tb drive. I know 300Gb is overkill but I didn't want to have to do this again. After 4 or 5 failing attempts I finally decided to settle for a 150Gb sys partition.

The problems were many. First of all it took several attempts to determine exactly where they were saying to pause the installation and repartition the drive. Once I had that down I ran into error messages as soon as the installation was finished. These went away after all the updates were installed. Next was the know problem of the various windows apps reporting that the sys partition was still 20Gb while some reported it was 300Gb. I finally discovered that a Re-Installation would cure that.

Everything seemed fine until I started to move files from the old server. Just seconds into the transfer I would get an error message say there wasn't enough available space. I knew that wasn't true.

By now my mind is blown. I decided to do a regular installation with no re-partitioning. I needed to make sure there wasn't a software problem. The installation went well and files transfered with no problems. I was fairly certain the new hardware was not causing problems.

I had no clue as to what might be causing the problems. I was following the same procedure outlined by two different people. I was using very new hardware but that shouldn't make a difference. S_M_E used Paragon and Drashna used Partition Magic. I was using PartedMagic also known as GParted (http://wiki.partedmagic.com/index.php/Using_GParted). The third difference was the size I was trying to set the new partition to.

In the last attempt I decided to bring the partition size down to 150Gb.

I started a new installation, paused at the appropriate spot and repartitioned the drive for a sys partition of 150Gb. Resumed the installation. After the installation was finished there were no error messages. Explorer still reported the sys partition was only 20Gb but the WHS Console reported it to be 150Gb. Time for a Re-Installation.

Started the re-installation, let it run to completion with no problems. Ran all the updates, again with no problems. Now everything reported the partitions to be the correct size.

For the big test I select a shared folder from the old server with an extremely large amount of video files. Highlighted them all, selected Copy, went to the shared folder on the new server and selected paste. It tool several minutes but it completed without a problem.

So now it appears I have a working WHS with a 150Gb System partition. I have SQL Server 2005 Express installed on it which also seem to be working correctly. Now to install MyMovies.

Sunday, March 25, 2012 1:32 PM

It's years down the road now, but I only hit this conversation because I ran out of my 20GB WHS space now.

But I did find a solution that does away with the dreaded "proper size" syndrom as follows:

I am in possession of a Freecom Hard Drive Dock PRO cost €35 -

http://shop.freecom.com/DRHM/store?Action=DisplaySubCategoryProductListPage&SiteID=freecom&Locale=en_GB&Env=BASE&categoryID=52248100

Am sure there are more similar products to be obtained elsewhere!

Process:

1) Attach Freecom to Laptop (with in my case ONLY drive: C:/), thus after insertion of HDD 1 TB taken out off my WHS this WHS Disk C; ( with following partitions) = 20GB drive C: now became E:/ + 910GB drive remained D: / -

2) Then Started Asconis Disk Director 11 Home which I have installed on my Laptop. This showed Drive 1 = C: and Drive 2 = D: 910GB and E: 20 GB

3) Important: Make Drive E: (=20GB WHS v1 C:/ drive) as NON- ACTIVE!!

4) Resize In Acronis Disk Director 11 Home to your liking. I made drive D:/ (was 910GB) to resize its volume to 802.6 GB. AND extend drive E:/ from 20GB to 128.9GB

5) execute instructions in Acronis.

6) 2 minutes later - ALL SET!

7) Make Drive E:/ active again - Acronis will now restart your LAPTOP; when your laptop restart is finished: restart Acronis result: Drive E:/ is NOT ACTIVE YET..., now set drive E:/ to be set active again; execute and this time your drive E:/ is ACTIVE !

8) Install the WHS drive in WHS in my case = Acer EasyStore 340

all together 25 minutes... AND proper size is recognised. See pix 1 and 2 attached.

Saturday, August 04, 2012 12:06 PM

I appreciate the update using a drive cloning device and Acronis. It worked for me as well using your instructions however the resizing of the OS partition was overriden and returned to 20GB later when I had to reinstall the OS. I also noticed on my HP MediaSmart EX495 that the OS partition always continued to show 20 GB on the WHS v1 Console 'System Status' tab despite showing the new, larger 128GB partition on the drive properties and Advanced Admin Console. Does anyone know how I can make this change in the OS partition size permanent and make the Console 'System Status' tab show the same 128GB partition? I've heard that you need to adjust some registry settings in order to get everything in agreement on a MediaSmart and to make the change permanent (survive future reinstalls)

Grateful for any advice.