After running the server for a period of time, system partition C is very likely running out of space. In this situation, nobody likes to waste a long time to recreate partitions and restore everything from backup. It can't be better if you can increase partition size without losing data. Windows Server 2012 native Disk Management tool has "Extend Volume" function to help increase volume size. However, it can only increase NTFS partition and only works by deleting the contiguous partition. Third party software is much more powerful, but you'd better back up first and run the safest tool. In this article, I'll introduce how to increase partition size in Windows Server 2012 (R2) with native Disk Management and safe partition software.
1. Increase partition size in Server 2012 Disk Management
As I said above, before extending a partition with Disk Management, you must delete the contiguous volume on the right. There's another Shrink Volume function, some people may ask why not shrinking partition without losing data.
As you see in my server, the 20GB Unallocated space was shrunk from D: drive, Extend Volume is greyed out for both C and E drive. This is because:
- "Shrink Volume" can only make Unallocated space on the right when shrinking a partition.
- "Extend Volume" function can only merge Unallocated space to left contiguous partition.
After shrinking D drive, Unallocated space is on the left of E drive and is nonadjacent to C drive, so Extend Volume is disabled for both partitions.
How to increase partition size in Windows Server 2012 R2 without software:
- Transfer all files in the right partition (such as D:) to other place.
- Right click D: drive and select "Delete Volume".
- Right click the left partition C: and select "Extend Volume".
- Follow up the pop-up Extend Volume Wizard.
The partitions to be deleted and increased must be the same Primary or Logical drive. Otherwise, you still cannot extend C: drive after deleting D. If you don't want to delete partition or if the partitions are different, you have to use third party software.
2. Increase system partition size in Server 2012 R2 with safe tool
Comparing with Disk Management, NIUBI Partition Editor has much more advantages such as:
- It can decrease and increase both NTFS and FAT32 partitions.
- While it shrinking a volume, Unallocated space can be made on either left or right.
- It can merge Unallocated space to either contiguous or non-adjacent partition on the same disk.
- It has other ability to merge, copy, convert, wipe, optimize, hide partition, scan bad sectors, etc.
Better than other tools, NIUBI Partition Editor has powerful data protection technology to help decrease and increase partition size in Windows Server 2012/2016/2019/2022 and previous Server 2003/2008.
- 1 Second Rollback - automatically reverts server to original status in a flash if any error is detected when change partition size.
- Virtual Mode - all operations will be listed as pending for preview, real disk partition won't be changed until click "Apply" to confirm.
- Cancel-at-will - if you applied incorrect operations, you can cancel the ongoing operations without damaging partitions.
- Hot Clone - clone disk partition without rebooting server, so you can clone system disk regularly as backup. Whenever system disk is down, you can boot from the clone disk in several minutes.
Download NIUBI Partition Editor and you'll see all disk partitions with structure and other information. In my server 2012, there are C, D, E and system reserved partition on Disk 0. Original C: drive is 40GB and D: is 70GB.
Steps to increase partition size in Windows Server 2012 r2 with NIUBI:
Step 2: Right click D: drive and select "Resize/Move Volume", drag left border towards right in the pop-up window. (Or enter an amount in the box behind Unallocated space before)
Then D: drive is shrunk and Unallocated space is made on its left side.
Step 2: Right click system partition C: and select "Resize/Move Volume" again, drag right border towards right to combine Unallocated space.
Then C: drive is increased from 40GB to 60GB in virtual mode.
Step 3: Click Apply to take effect to real disk partitions.
How to increase system partition size in Windows Server 2012 R2:
- If you want to increase C drive space with a nonadjacent partition (such as E in my server), there's an additional step to move Unallocated space next to C drive.
- If you use VMware, Hyper-V or any types of hardware RAID arrays, the steps are the same. If you want to increase size of system reserved partition follow the steps.
3. How to increase partition size of D/E in Server 2012 R2
When expanding a data volume for Windows 2012 server, there are 2 options.
① When there is plenty of free space on the same disk, follow the steps in the video to shrink C drive or other data volume:
② When there is not plenty of free space on the same disk, follow the steps in the video to move partition D to another disk:
4. How to increase volume size with another disk
In some servers, system partition C is full but there is no other partition on the same disk, or the entire disk is full. In that case, no software can increase partition size by adding space from another disk. Instead, you need to copy this disk to a larger one and extend partition with extra disk space.
Note: Unlike data volume, C: drive is where Operating System running from, copying single C: drive cannot ensure Windows bootable.
How to increase partition size by copying to a larger disk:
Besides decrease and increase partition size in Windows Server 2012/2016/2019/2022 and previous Server 2003/2008, NIUBI Partition Editor helps you do many other disk and partition management operations.
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