How to Extend Partition in Windows Server 2012 R2

by James, Updated on: July 8, 2022

When one or more partitions are filling up after running the server for a period of time. It can't be better if these partitions can be extended without losing data. Nobody likes to waste a long time to recreate partitions and restore everything from backup. To extend partition in Windows Server 2012 (R2), there are two kinds of tools: Windows native tool and third party software. The same with previous version, Server 2012 has two native tools - Diskpart command and Disk Management with GUI. In this article, I'll introduce how to extend disk partition in Windows Server 2012 (R2) with each tool.

Extend disk partition

1. Extend partition with Server 2012 Diskpart command tool

Diskpart is a command prompt tool that is integrated from Windows XP with set of commands. It is able to expand a partition fast and without losing data. However, not all partitions can be extended, the major disadvantages include:

  1. This partition must be formatted with NTFS file system or without file system (RAW).
  2. There must be adjacent Unallocated space on the right of the partition that you want to expand.

Diskpart has shrink command, but it cannot make required Unallocated space to extend other partition. For example, if you shrink D drive with Diskpart, Unallocated space is made on the right of D. This space is nonadjacent to C and is on the left of E drive, therefore, it can't be extended to other partition with Diskpart extend command. If you want to extend C drive partition with diskpart command, you must delete the contiguous partition D.

How to extend partition in Windows Server 2012 (r2) with Diskpart cmd:

  1. Press Windows + R on keyboard, type diskpart and press Enter.
  2. Input list volume and press Enter in diskpart command prompt window, then you'll see all single partitions in a list.
  3. Input select volume D and press Enter. (D is drive letter or number of the adjacent partition)
  4. Input delete volume and press Enter.
  5. Input select volume C and press Enter. (C is drive letter or number of the left contiguous partition, the right contiguous E drive can't be extended with this tool.)
  6. Input extend and press Enter.

Diskpart extend

Make sure there are no programs of Windows services installed in D drive, otherwise, do not delete it .

2. Extend partition in Windows Server 2012 with Disk Management

Different with Diskpart that runs via command prompt, Disk Management has graphic interface. You can see all storage devices with partition layout visually. In addition, you'll see detailed information of each partition as well as Unallocated space. From Windows Server 2008, advanced "Shrink Volume" and "Extend Volume" functions are added to help resize partition without losing data.

Disk Management is easier to use, but the same with Diskpart command, it cannot extend a partition by shrinking another one. That means, you also need to delete the contiguous volume on the right, otherwise, Extend Volume is grayed out.

How to extend partition in Server 2012 R2 with Disk Management:

  1. Back up or transfer files in D: drive (the right adjacent partition).
  2. Press Windows + X hotkey and click Disk Management in the list.
  3. Right click D: drive and select Delete Volume.
  4. Right click C: drive (the left adjacent partition) and select Extend Volume.
  5. Click Next till Finish in the pop-up Extend Volume Wizard window.

If D is a Logical drive, you cannot extend C drive even if you delete D in Disk Management.

Extend volume disabled

If you don't want to delete partition or if the type of the partitions are different, you have to run third party software.

3. Extend Server 2012 volume with NIUBI Partition Editor

To extend partition in Windows Server 2012 (R2), NIUBI Partition Editor is better choice. Comparing with Windows native tools, it is much more powerful.

Better than other tools, it has unique 1-Second Rollback, Virtual Mode and Cancel-at-will technologies to protect your system and data. Furthermore, it is 30% to 300% faster because of the advanced file-moving algorithm. These abilities are very important to help shrink and extend partition in Windows server.

Download NIUBI Partition Editor and follow the steps in the video to extend partition in Windows Server 2012 (R2).

How to extend partition C by shrinking other volumes:

Video guide

How to extend partition D by shrinking other volumes:

Video guide

In this way, Operating System, programs and associated settings, as well as anything else keep the same with before. You won't see any difference except partition size.

If you want to extend RAID 1/5/6/10 partition in Windows 2012 server, do not break array or do any operations to RAID controller, simply follow the steps in the video. If you want to extend Server 2012 virtual partition in VMware/Hyper-V, install NIUBI Partition Editor to the virtual machine and follow the same methods.

Extend partition volume with another disk

If there's no other partition or no available free space on the same disk, no software can transfer space from a different/separate disk. Because the size of a physical disk is fixed. A 500GB disk can't be decreased to 300GB or increased to 1TB. In this situation, there are 2 options for you to extend Server 2012 volume with another disk:

  1. Copy disk to a larger one and extend partition with extra disk space.
  2. Move a partition to another disk, delete it and add its space to another volume.

Select corresponding method above according to your own disk partition configuration. Besides shrinking and extending partition in Windows Server 2012/2016/2019/2022/2003/2008, NIUBI Partition Editor helps you do many other disk partition management operations.

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