Enlarging NTFS partition on Win2000 Pro fail

[dc2000]

Hello everyone:


I have a video monitoring system that ran out of space on HDD and I bought a new 500GB drive. The old HDD was broken down on two partitions: C:= 4.9GB (Bootable) and D:=110GB. Now I copied the whole HDD to a new one with Paragon Drive Copy and repaired Windows 2000 Pro on it. Everything worked fine until I attempted to resize partition on drive D from 110GB to 490GB with Partition Magic 8.0. (I did this resizing on another PC with Windows XP SP2 installed when I hooked it up as Secondary Master disk -- the Motherboard/BIOS is LBA compatible).

Now when I boot up I see blue screen of death and when I run Windows Repair from CD it doesn't see either C: or D:

I can make a copy of the old HDD again but my question is how can I also enlarge disk D: without loosing data?

Thanks in advance...

 

[bengance]

Do you have the original Windows 2000 disks? I would recommend doing a fresh install and just copying the document files over. Yeah it might be a pain to have to reinstall the OS & programs, but I guess it's better than the BSOD.

If you have to boot the drive to get the files off use a Linux live distro or Bart PE to access the drive.

If you really want to go about it this, can you try again and see if you missed some steps the first time?

 

[EricB]

Do you have the original Windows 2000 disks? I would recommend doing a fresh install and just copying the document files over. Yeah it might be a pain to have to reinstall the OS & programs, but I guess it's better than the BSOD.

If you have to boot the drive to get the files off use a Linux live distro or Bart PE to access the drive.

If you really want to go about it this, can you try again and see if you missed some steps the first time?

I agree. 2000 won't recognized the bigger size

 

[dc2000]

Thanks for your input guys. Indeed it is possible. It took me several days to figure it out. Here's what's required to use HDD bigger than 137GB with your Windows 2000 Pro (it worked for me 100%):

(1) Install SP4 for Win2000 (download it from Microsoft site for free);

(2) Back up all your data (better make a copy of HDD 1-to-1 to another drive, or at least create an image of it);

(3) Format all your partitions smaller than 137GB and install Windows 2000 (or copy it from old drive 1-to-1 like I did. For that you can use Partition Magic, or Paragon Drive Copy. I used both.)

(4) If you have other hardware installed as well (like motherboard and PCI cards in my case) Windows 2000 won't boot up. To fix you will need Windows 2000 Professional Installation CD. Pop it in and boot from it. Then in a process of installation go up to a screen when installation screen shows your old Windows 2000 partition. Select it and then it will ask if you'd like to repair it. Select yes. (If it doesn't see that older version of Windows 2000 was installed -- you did something wrong -- DO NOT PROCEED! Possibly you partitioned your drive bigger than 137GB. In this case simply shrink all partitions at least down to 130GB. For that now you can use another PC with WinXP -- it sees big drives by default. Use this drive as a second master there) If repair started, you'll have to sit by your PC and answer stupid questions like if you're reinstalling Windows. When done all your programs and documents will be preserved and working. No need to copy anything like first person suggested!

(5) Now if Windows boots up without a problem, do the following changes to the Registry (Start -> Run, type regedit, click OK):
= Locate this key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Atapi\Parameters
= Add new value to it: EnableBigLba (Type: DWORD, Value Data: 1)

(6) Now you can expand your partitions to a bigger size (past 137GB) using Partition Magic or any other software designed for it. Again to do it you will need Windows XP. Plug your drive as a secondary. (Make sure that partitioning software supports NTFS and is reliable, as integrity of your HDD depends on it.)

(7) This operation may take up to an hour to complete. When done, restart and now Windows 2000 Pro should see your big drive.


For example: My HDD now has two partitions:
C: = 6GB;
D: = 480GB

Hope this helps, cheers!

 

[EricB]

I didn't know if you was ready for that explanation.