Using Dell ExtPart: An Oldie But a Goodie

For a tool that has been around for well over a decade, it never ceases to amaze me that I need to dig it out of the toolbox at least once every few months. Dell Basic Disk Expansion, more commonly referred to by the executable name ExtPart, was originally released on July 30th, 2003. From Dell’s official information, “the ExtPart utility provides support for online volume expansion of NTFS formatted basic disks.” The key word in that sentence is online. There are plentiful options when it comes to offline partitioning but online partitioning of say, a boot volume, is where this tool stands out.

The last handful of Windows operating systems give an administrator the option of right clicking a disk in Disk Management and selecting Extend Volume. If there are some legacy 2000/2003/2003 R2 systems in the environment, however, that option is out the window. The following is an example scenario of a Windows 2003 R2 vSphere VM running low on disk space on its only disk.  Important Note:  Since you cannot create a VM snapshot and then change VMDK size, it is recommended that you mitigate risk with a proper backup before utilizing the utility.

1. Download ExtPart at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=R64398
2. Enter Disk Management and check for unallocated space.
3. Edit Settings on the VM and add an appropriate amount of storage to the VMDK (+10GB in this example).
4. Refresh the view in Disk Management to see the new unallocated space.
5. Since the ExtPart utility makes changes in MB, it may be useful to Right Click on the unallocated space, select Properties, and Select the Volumes Tab to record the unallocated space in MB.
6. Open a cmd prompt and navigate to the directory ExtPart.exe was placed.  This directory is C:\Dell\ExtPart in this example.
7. Run ExtPart using the following syntax found in the Dell Documentation.
8. Using the amount (in MB) notated earlier, I will run extpart C: 10229 and verify the results.
9. Refresh Disk Management and verify final value.
10. Examine your new Free Space value in Windows Explorer.
11. Rejoice!

The post Using Dell ExtPart: An Oldie But a Goodie appeared first on Vernak.