Consolidate free space across different logical drives

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:50:26 Z

Hi,
I have a Windows 2003 server which has an EMC Storage connected to it via fibre. The storage has been partitioned into multiple logical drives and each drive is about 1TB in size. Now the situation is such that I have around 100GB of free space on each logical drive and I would like to consolidate all the free space as a single shared location on my server. To elaborate, lets see I have four logical drives called C: D: E: & F: and all of these drives has about 100GB free. How can I make use of all this free space as a single shared location on my server, for example \\myServer\newShare .... Is something of this sort even possible? I just need pointers and I should be able to dig details once i get a lead ...

thanks
mankool

Consolidate free space across different logical drives

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:59:26 Z

Hi mankool,

Based on the research, we cannot consolidate free space on existing logical drives C: D: E: & F: as one single shared location on a server.

This is because of the reason that: when we have formatted and mounted the logical drives onto the system, all the space in the logical drive is reserved by the OS, and it will be used for data storage. We cannot reallocate the free space on the existing volume to consolidate them into one shared drive.

Thanks.

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Consolidate free space across different logical drives

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:44:55 Z

Unfortunately, the only thing you can do is resize the volume to reclaim this space.

Now, if there was some concern that you would have to give this space back to one of the volumes at a future point, well, there is the option of using a mount point. This takes an empty volumes and, rather than mount it as a drive letter, mount it as a folder on an existing drive.

Example:

The X: drive on Disk 1 is 1,000 MB's and 900 MB's are used. Disk 2 is empty and 1,000 M's. Rather than format Disk 2 as a new drive letter, you format and graft it on to Disk 1 as X:\New Folder\.

TechNet information on Mount Points:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc938934.aspx

I know this doesn't help yur scenario (havign to resize) but it gives you options down the line if you do resize.

Consolidate free space across different logical drives

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:53:25 Z

Besides, you really don't want to let your volumes stay below 10% free space.

This adds a lot to the file system overhead.