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I have Dell PowerEdge Server T310 built with a Raid5 (3 x 300gb) Windows Server 2008 R2 SAS controller PERC H700.

I have recently added a 4th drive 300gb thru Dell’s application “Openmanage”. The whole procedure went well. Now I want to merge the unallocated space with the Datapart1 (see below), the system does not permit to extend volume, and when I try to format the unallocated space I get an error saying “the disk already contains the maximum number of partition”.

My question is; How do I do it? Do I have to copy all data from Datapart1 to a spare drive, delete the partition and recreate a new one using all the space available? Or is there another way?

Tried to post snap shot of disk, but I don’t have enough reputation, sorry.

39 mb no name - (OEM Partition), 3.00 gb Recovery - (System, Active, Primary Partition), 40.00 gb OS (C:) - (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition), 514.71 gb Datapart1 (D:) - (Logical Drive), 278.88 gb Unallocated

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  • Can you describe what happens when you try to extend Datapart1 volume?
    – Dusan Bajic
    Jun 8, 2012 at 12:47
  • If you post a link to the screen shot (imgur or whatever), I will edit it into your question.
    – MDMarra
    Jun 8, 2012 at 12:48
  • [Can you describe what happens when you try to extend Datapart1 volume?] Absolutely nothing, the option was grayed out
    – 3Desco
    Jun 8, 2012 at 13:57

2 Answers 2

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Finally, the only way I was able to merged the extra space was;

  1. Backup all the data on that partition.
  2. Delete the partition
  3. Create a new partition using all available space.
  4. Then restore the volume backup.

The reason I had to do it this way is because Windows Server 2008 R2 does not let you have more than 4 partitions no matter what software you use i.e.: (partition magic). So the extra space I had created was unallocated and I could not initialize it or expand the existing partition.

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in the dell tools, adding a drive to an existing RAID5 group is considered a "RAID Level Migration" (exact wording depends on version), not an expansion. when you choose a RAID level migration, tell it you want RAID5, select the new drive as a member in addition to the existing 3, and it should restripe on to your new drive.

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  • What I did was 1-Add the physical drive 2-Added it to the Raid5 3-Rebuild Raid5
    – 3Desco
    Jun 8, 2012 at 14:00
  • did my answer guide you in the right direction? if so, please accept it as the correct answer by click on the checkmark to the left of my answer.
    – longneck
    Jun 8, 2012 at 14:13

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