Home Forums SBS 2011 Essentials - expanding hard drive storage

Hi,

We are running SBS 2011 Essentials on a 1TB hard drive. Predictably, our data partition is running low on space.

We purchased an additional 2TB hard drive, but I'm wondering how to best go about implementing the additional space:

1. Restore from backup onto the new 2TB hard drive? If so, How do I partition the new drive to the same relative proportions?

2. Does SBS 2011 *Essentials* allow for the seamless spanning of an existing partition to a different drive?

3. Is there a better way?

Thanks in advance.

Couple of options.
Restoring from a backup should be fairly straightforward, and nondestructive (if it doesn't go well, you have not touched the 1 TB drive.)

What is taking up the space? Perhaps simply install and format the new drive and move the large folders over to the big drive and leave the 1 TB alone. Always better if you do not have to muck with the OS.

You could get drive bender and merge drives. Supposed to be reliable, I have used it at home successfully, but don't quite feel comfortable with using it for mission critical work.

You can't always do this with certain RAIDs, but this is why I prefer a RAID 1 for the OS and a RAID 5 or 6 for the data. Then you partition the data drive and in instances like this, as Wendell alludes to, you don't have to worry about your system drive.

It's a bit pricey, but probably worth using partitionmagicserver for your partition software. The thing does EVERYTHING. Plus 24/7 support. You would simply install your 2TB drive, format it, and merge it to the 1 TB drive. It's already partitioned anyway. If you backed up and restored you could use it, but you would want to use computer management or PM to extend/enlarge the image so you gain all the space. The other possibility is to simply move the data to the 2TB drive. This would allow you to use PM in the future and not worry about the system drive as it would be an entirely separate drive, plus moving the data opens up space for the system drive.

But, a word of caution. You can't just copy and paste all types of data. For instance, if AC's SQL were there, you wouldn't want to just move it. It does have easy ways to do it properly built in.

Finally, the first thing I would do would be to use a free program called TreeSize. This will allow you to see all of your files from largest to smallest. I remember once finding a 32GB backup on my data drive. Just deleted it.

I do think Wendell's way may be the safest. Restore to the new drive. Just make sure your restore boot disk contains all the system files and boot files needed to boot from. If you use the native image backup and/or the original install disk, it should any way.

How is you 1TB partitioned now? You did say the data partition is large

By default, the system drive is 60 GB and cannot be altered without booting it from another OS, which will then allow you to change the partition setup. But even if you took the system off the 1TB drive, that's not a lot of additional space.

Just to give data storage, you may be able to just add another drive: 1) install drive 2)Right click computer for Manage and format and partition the new drive. There are other ways to do this, this is probably my usual option.

I can seen where PartitionManagerServer could be very useful, but if it is just a data drive, do they all have to be in the same folder? Again, as Bert implied: What's clogging up your drive. Tree Size Free is a great program (did I mention it was free??)

Some great advice here.

I agree that that best way is a backup and restore. Your system partition will stay the same size and your data will stay the same size as well. After the restore, you can extend the data partition.

Of course, if you had something like VMWare, it's as simple as shutting down the VM and moving the virtual disk to the new 2TB drive. Then expanding the disk. One of the best parts about virtualization.

It's also a great way to test your backup. If it's the system partition running low on space, the equation definitely changes. Windows doesn't have a way to move partitions to the end of the disk. Something G-Parted (free) or Ease-US/Macrium will be needed.

Thanks for everyone and sorry for the late reply. We just bought an additional 2TB enterprise-grade HD and relocated the client backups that drive.

Not sure if it's the most elegant solution, but it seems ok so far.