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How to expand or resize an online volume using the VEA GUI

Article: 100000728
Last Published: 2012-04-11
Ratings: 1 1
Product(s): InfoScale & Storage Foundation

Description

The Expand Volume command allows you to increase a dynamic volume's size. Storage Foundation for Windows (SFW) can automatically assign destination disks, or the administrator can manually assign these disks.

NOTE: SFW can expand a volume only in case of the following:
  • The volume is formatted with NTFS or is a raw dynamic volume.
  • There is unallocated space on a dynamic disk within the dynamic disk group onto which the volume can be extended.

SFW cannot expand a volume if one of the following is true:
  • The volume is formatted with FAT or FAT32.
  • The volume is on a single MBR disk and will exceed 2TB after expansion.
  • The volume is set to read only.
  • There is not enough unallocated space available on the dynamic disks within the dynamic disk group to extend the volume.
SFW can extend volumes onto a maximum of 256 disks. No portion of an extended volume can be deleted without deleting the entire volume. A system or boot volume is extended in increments of the disk's cylinder size and only into contiguous space at the end of the volume.
 

To expand a dynamic volume

1. Right-click the dynamic volume you want to expand, highlight Resize Volume, and then click Expand Volume in the context menu that appears.

 

2. On the following dialog box enter a number in the desired text box.

 

The options are as follows:
 

  • The Add by option allows SFW to add a specific amount to the volume by entering a number in the box.
  • The New volume size option allows to specify the total volume size desired.
  • Clicking the Max Size button enters the maximum partition size in the New volume size entry box. The drop-down lists next to the volume size text entry boxes allow you to indicate the size in Sectors, KB, MB, GB, or TB.


3. Choose to allow the default Auto assign destination disks, or click the Manually assign destination disks radio button to assign the disks. To assign the disks manually, use the buttons for adding and removing disks to move the disks you want assigned as destination disks to the right pane of the window. If desired, check Disable Track Alignment to disable track alignment for the volume.

4. Click OK to complete the command.
 
Note: Please refer to the Related Articles section below to review best practices for expanding NTFS volumes.
 

Applies To

In clustered environments (MSCS, VCS, FOC) it is not mandatory to offline the disk resources in order to expand the volume. A volume can be expanded while the resources are online in the cluster.

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