Sometimes you need to move partition in Windows 2008 server. For example, some people want to extend C drive, but Extend Volume is grayed out in Disk Management after shrinking D. To solve this problem, you need to move partition D to the right and make unallocated space next to C drive. Windows inbuilt Disk Management and Diskpart command tools cannot move partition, so you have to run third party software. This article introduces how to move partition in Windows Server 2008 R2 without losing data. Move volume to the left or right on a disk and move a partition to another disk.
1. Can't move partition in Server 2008 via Disk Management
Windows Server 2008 has built-in Disk Management tool, besides basic ability to create, delete and format partition, it has new Shrink and Extend Volume functions to help resize disk partition.
However, Shrink Volume function cannot make unallocated space on the left while shrinking a volume. Extend Volume can only expand a partition when there's adjacent unallocated space on the right.
As you see in the screenshot, unallocated space that shrunk from D drive is nonadjacent to C drive. Therefore, Extend Volume option is disabled. After moving partition D to the right, there's adjacent unallocated space behind C drive, then Extend Volume will be enabled.
Disk Management cannot change the start position of a volume, this is the reason why it cannot shrink a volume towards right, extend a volume towards left or move a partition. To accomplish these tasks, you must run disk patition software.
2. How to move drive to the left or right in Windows server
While moving partitions in Server 2008/2012/2016/2019/2022, the start and end position will be changed, all files in the partition will be moved to new locations, too. So there is potential data loss risk with unreliable software, remember to back up in advance.
Better than other tools, NIUBI Partition Editor has unique 1 Second Rollback, Virtual Mode, Cancel-at-will, Hot Clone technologies to protect system/data, and advanced file-moving algorithm to help move partition much faster.
Download NIUBI Partition Editor and you'll see all disk with partition layout and other information on the right.
How to move partition in Windows Server 2008 R2 to the right:
Step 1: Right click D: drive and select "Resize/Move Volume", put the mouse pointer in the middle of D drive and drag towards right in the pop-up window.
Then partition D is moved to the right and unallocated space is moved to the left at the same time.
Step 2: Right click C: drive and select "Resize/Move Volume" again, drag right border towards right in the pop-up window.
Then unallocated space is combined into C: drive.
Step 3: Click "Apply" on top left to execute.
If you want to extend drive E: with left adjacent unallocated space, you can combine directly without moving partition E to the left. To do this, right click E: and select "Resize/Move Volume", drag left border towards left in the pop-up window.
Watch the video how to move partition and unallocated space in Server 2008 R2:
If there's another drive F: on the right and you want to extend it, then you should firstly move partition E to the left. Unlike STEP 1, you should drag the middle of E drive towards left in the pop-up window.
3. How to move Server 2008 volume to another disk
This method above is used to move partition with adjacent unallocated space on the same disk. If you want to move a volume to another hard disk, follow the steps below.
How to move partition in Windows Server 2008 R2 from one disk to another:
- (Optional) Shrink a volume on destination disk to get unallocated space.
- Right click original partition (such as D:) and select "Copy Volume", select the unallocated space on destination disk in pop-up window.
- Edit the size, location and type of the target partition and click "Finish".
- Right click original partition D and select "Change drive letter", change it to any other one.
- Change the drive letter of copied partition to D.
The size of a physical hard disk is fixed, a 500GB disk can't be decreased to 250GB or increased to 1TB. Therefore, you can't move a partition and add its disk space to another disk. No matter you want to move partition to the left/right or front/end of a disk, or move partition to another disk, there should be unallocated space. If there's no unallocated space, you can shrink an existing partition to make.
Besides moving partition in Windows Server 2008/2012/2016/2019/2022, NIUBI Partition Editor helps you do many other operations such as shrink, extend, merge, convert, hide, wipe partition, scan bad sectors, optimize file system.
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