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Over time the boot partition on a Windows Server 2003 installation might just turn out to be too small. There can be various reasons for this, but the fact remains that over time you will accumulate data on the boot drive that you didn't take account for when you set it up initially.

Luckily I run almost all of my servers in a VMware based virtualized environment, where it's easy to expand the the virtual disks. The problem is that Windows Server 2003 doesn't let you easily expand the boot volume, at least not without downtime. I've previously talked about using tools like GParted to expand the boot volume but there are easier ways to do it and prevent downtime at the same time!

All you need is love. No,wait, that's something else entirely! All you need is ExtPart. ExtPart is a lovely little 36KB tool that Dell has provided to expand partitions on Dell based servers and storage systems. It is a little known fact that ExtPart can do the job in any 32 bit Windows Server 2000 or 2003 based install (no 64 bit support, sadly), and in Server 2008 there are other methods of doing this.

Enough talk, lets get down to the business at hand.

1. Download ExtPart from the Dell download site
2. Expand your boot volume, either via the Virtual Infrastructure Client or via vmkfstools
3. Run ExtPart inside your VM to expand your boot volume to the new size

Thats it. The following screenshots outline the process very well, without having to guide you through each step. Have a look!

It can't get much simpler that this, honestly.