Why can't I extend my dynamic volume over a second drive?

Question

We have a server that is running on hardware RAID1. We've needed to add additional disks, but unfortunately the raid controller doesn't support RAID10. So we've added another RAID1 array, and want to merge it together using Windows dynamic disks.

The documentation says "You can extend a simple volume onto additional dynamic disks to create a spanned volume".

So, I tried:

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
* Disk 0    Online          530 GB  1024 KB   *
  Disk 1    Online          200 GB   199 GB   *

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
* Volume 0     C                NTFS   Simple       529 GB  Healthy    Boot
  Volume 1         System Rese  NTFS   Simple       100 MB  Healthy    System
  Volume 2     D                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media

DISKPART> extend disk=1

Virtual Disk Service error:
The volume requires contiguous disk extents.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753058.aspx states the following:

"You cannot extend the current system or boot partitions."

Answer 2

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753058.aspx states the following:

"You cannot extend the current system or boot partitions."

Martin,

That is incorrect, that is not what the article says. That is paraphrasing the beginning of a paragraph that started to describe the "extend" value ... and had you continued to read the remainder of the paragraph you would have learned that,

"... a dynamic simple or spanned volume can be extended to any empty space on any dynamic disk. Using this command, you can extend an existing volume into newly created space. If the partition was previously formatted with the NTFS file system, the file system is automatically extended to occupy the larger partition. No data loss occurs. If the partition was previously formatted with any file system format other than NTFS, the command fails with no change to the partition."

So to be correct, per your own article reference, you would have had to say something to the effect of "Here's a Microsoft technet article that illustrates how to extend your dynamic volume onto additional dynamic disk ... ((hyperlink to article here))."

However, the article should maybe be a little clearer about HOW one would need to go about accomplishing the task. Through the GUI is not the way to get it done with dis-contiguous space even if they peices are all on Dynamic simple disks. Sadly enough.

Just above the description section are instructions on how to use the utility DISKPART to accomplish the task from a CLI (Command Line Interface) ... I recommend going that approach toward achieving the goal.

And while this thread has begun to age somewhat, it appeared for me when I went searching for answers and this is still relevant info for anyone also searching. So there you is, enjoy.

Answer 3

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753058.aspx#BKMK_CMD

For basic volumes, the unallocated space must be on the same disk as, and must follow (be of higher sector offset than) the partition with focus.

The unallocated space with which you want to extend, your volume must be after the volume to be extended!

Answer 4

it means that the disk you want to extend volume and the unallocated space is not continuous, as in they are not next to each other, the unallocated space should be immediately next to the volume you want to extend all the best papi