Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 In-Place Upgrade Question

[Jpoandl]

Hey,

Because of the 4GB system parition limit in Windows NT 4.0 (Yes, I know the true limit is 7.8GB..but whatever), after my inplace upgrade from NT 4.0 to 2K server is complete, I can not access all of my DISK0 drive space.

For example, I've installed Windows NT 4.0 BDC of my current production domain. Duing the install, I made the system partition 4GB's (I could have made this 7.8GB). Anyway, the hard disk that this partition exists on is a 18GB hardware mirrored drive. This means I still have about 14GB's of space left over.

Then, I perform the upgrade from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000. After looking in Disk Management, I see that my C:\ drive is 4GB and that I have 14GB's of free space left on this physical disk.

However, after reading a few technet articles, Disk Administrator can NOT be used to "extend" a system partition...even after you convert it to DYNAMIC DISK.

Therefore, I have a problem. I would like to use this free space. The only options I could think of are:

1) Use a third party tool to grow the system partition? (ServerMagic...now called Volume Administrator..)

2) Restore the server on already properly sized system volume. (Not sure how 2K will handle the Disk Signatures with wrong disk size)

3) Try to extend the partition in Windows NT 4.0 using third party software and then perform Win2K upgrade.

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions. I figure that anyone performing this type of domain upgrade on new hardware would run into this problem.

Thanks... Joseph L. Poandl
MCSE 2000

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[tertone100]

Why don,t you create another partition using disk managment?
Or, with dynamic disk, you can mount volumes on your c: drive ( just like server magic does). A partition of 4GB is ok for w2k, unless there is a reason that it should be larger.
I'd Put the rest on othre partitions.

 

[Jpoandl]

Tertone100,

Yup, we could do that. Our design goal, however, was to have one large C:\ drive to hold the OS and AD Database. Then AD log file would be moved to another large drive.

I am working in a large corporation. So standards are important. The only machine that will be in place upgraded is the PDC. All other servers are being built from scratch. Therefore, we won't have the volume size problem elsewhere.

If we keep to our design, 4GB c:\ drive will not be enough to hold the AD database. This is why we are looking to extend the c:\ partition to 18GB's.

Thank you for the response.

Joseph L. Poandl
MCSE 2000

If your company is in need of experts to examine technical problems/solutions, please check out

http://www.esavio.com