How to safely extend or enlarge dynamic disk/volume under PC or Windows Server?

Dynamic disk support, with volumes spanning multiple disks and flexible volume reconfiguration, is welcomed by most computer users, especially server users. And it indeed offers many advantages, while the limitation of Disk Management provides that only Simple Volume and Spanned Volume can be extended, that is, the dynamic volume still cannot be extended in most conditions, especially for the system volume under PC or servers. This brings much inconvenience and frustration to users.

However, do not worry about this and we would like to provide methods to extend dynamic disk/volume on the Windows server with all the data protected.

Extend Windows Server dynamic disk/volume with Windows built-in Disk Management tool

Windows Server built-in Disk Management allows users to extend Simple Volume and Spanned Volume. Apart from the Simple Volume and Spanned Volume, other kinds of dynamic volumes cannot be extended with the Disk Management tool. Besides this, the system/boot volume also cannot be extended in Disk Management before Windows Vista. In this way, some reliable dynamic disk partition software will be helpful.

How to extend Windows Server dynamic disk without data loss?

There are many kinds of partition tool for the basic disk but not the dynamic disk. As we all know, Windows Disk Management tool allow users to convert basic disk to dynamic disk and convert dynamic disk back when necessary. However, Disk Management tool does not allow users to convert dynamic disk to basic unless all the partitions has been deleted. All the data will be lost during this operation.

In order to meet the demand of dynamic disk extension, EaseUS provides two ways to resize the dynamic volume. You can choose the right way that fits into your case.

First solution: directly resize dynamic volumes

Resizing dynamic volumes can be easily realized by simple clicking and dragging with EaseUS Partition Master.

1. Download, install and run EaseUS partition program.

2. Right click the volume you want to resize, select Resize volume.

3. Position the mouse pointer on the right partition handle to extend or shrink the volume, or you can directly put in a size number.

4. Click OK, and you will see the resized volume in the disk layout.

5. Click Apply to execute the operation.

Second solution: resize dynamic volumes by converting dynamic disk to basic

There is another safe way to extend Windows Server dynamic disk/volume without any data loss: convert dynamic disk to basic disk and resize it on the basic disk, after it is partitioned to the size that you prefer, you can convert this basic disk back to dynamic one.

Steps to convert dynamic disk to basic disk and resize dynamic disk:

Please download the demo version to have a test yourself.

After it is installed, launch this partition software and follow the steps below:

1. Select dynamic disk which you want to Convert to basic disk on the disk map, click "Disk" on main menu and choose "Convert to basic disk" or right click the dynamic disk and choose "Convert to basic disk".

2. After choosing "Convert to basic disk", you will see the dynamic disk has become basic disk on the disk map.

3. Click "Apply" to convert dynamic disk to basic disk. After EaseUS Partition Master applies these changes, you will see the dynamic disk has become basic disk in Windows Disk Management. And then you can use "Resize/Move partition" feature to resize partitions on the basic disk. (Tips: It is important to backup data before resizing partition, because nothing is 100% secure.)

A detailed step instructions about resizing partition can be found in the following articles:

• How to resize/move partition without data loss?

4. After resizing the basic disk, you can convert them back to dynamic disk by Windows built-in disk management. See the tutorial for the detailed instructions: Transform the basic disk into dynamic disk.

Notice: Volumes can be converted to Simple Volume or Mirrored Volume only, as Striped/Spanned/RAID5 dynamic volumes should be re-built in Disk Management.

 

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