How to resize RAID 1 virtual partitions without rebuilding RAID array?

Hardware RAID 1 provides data protection feature, so it is widely used my many companies, as data security is most important for a server. However, the same with physcial hard disk, the virtual drive on RAID 1 array also runs low of free space. All the size of virtual partitions on RAID 1 array is carefully allocated while building the Server and RAID, is it possible to resize RAID 1 partition without losing data or rebuilding the RAID array?

The answer is yes, in fact, you can resize RADI 1 array very easily, after reading this article, you'll know how easy it is to resize a RAID virtual partition.

Why RAID 1 partition can be resized

To Operating System, the RAID 1 virtual drive is the same as a physical hard disk after you building the RAID array. The only difference from physical disk partitions is data read and write of RAID 1 controlled by RAID controller instead of Windows.

It is also the same as resizing a physical disk partition to resize RAID 1 drive. You just need to shrink other virtual data partition of the same RAID 1 array to get some Unallocated space, and then you can easily extend the system drive with this Unallocated space.

Hardware RAID 1 with dynamic Mirrored Volume

According to the feedback of many visitors, they cannot tell the difference from hardware RAID 1 and dynamic RAID 1. Just open Disk Management (right click "My Computer" > "Manage" > "Storage" > "Disk Management".

If you use hardware RAID 1, the virtual disk shows "Basic", otherwise, it shows "Dynamic".

How to resize RAID 1 partition without rebuilding

Before resizing RAID 1 drives, you'd better open Disk Management, because you'll better understand the layout.

As the picture shows, the RAID 1 array is created by 2 80GB hard disk, in disk management it is recognised as Disk 0. There are 3 virtual drives on this RAID 1 array. You can easily shrink Partition D: or E: to extend the C drive with Partition Assistant Server, which supports any types of RAID array with any RAID controllers.

Step 1, Launch Partition Assistant Server, you'll see the RAID 1 drives and the layout is the same with disk management.

Step 2: Right click drive D: or G: and select "Allocate Free Space", in the pop up window, add the free space to C: drive.

Step 3: Click "OK" and back to main window, press "Apply" button on top left to proceed, within several minutes, the partitions resized and C: drive space increased to 34.12GB.

In conclusion, to resize RAID 1 virtual partitions, you just need to select a data drive to shrink and then extend another drive with the free space.

Special situations resizing RAID 1

1. There is no data drive on the same RAID 1.

2. All data partitions are full and you cannot get free space from other data drives.

Under both situations, you have to clone the RAID 1 virtual disk to another hard disk or RAID array. It is also very easy to clone with the build-in "Disk Copy Wizard".

You may follow the steps above to resize partitions after copy, or change partition size when cloning.

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