Extending partition diskpart.exe

PowerEdge 4600
Perc3/Di Raid 5
Windows 2000 server

All bios/firmware/OS patches up-to-date as of 4/22/2006

Configuration was 3 hard drives divided into 1)Dell Utility primary
partition, 2)primary partition C Drive, 3)extended partition with 3 logical
drives. Added 5 hard drives of the same size as the original drives.
Successfully used OpenManage Array Manager to add 4 of the new drives to the
Raid 5 array and reserve one as a hot spare.

OpenManage Array Manager shows the new space as unallocated after the
extended partition. Dell tech support told me to use Microsoft’s
diskpart.exe to add the unallocated space to the extended partition.

Diskpart will not run and I get the following error. “The disk management
services could not complete the operation.” I found MS kb327020 which
indicates this error can occur after adding new disks to a RAID Array with a
dynamic disk. All my disks are basic and never have been dynamic. The KB
article also says the issue is fixed with the latest service pack. I
checked my dates on the fix files listed in the article and they are both
6/19/2003.

This server hosts our ERP and other business critical apps. I do not want
to wipe out and reinstall even the extended partition if at all possible.

Anyone have any idea how to get diskpart.exe working?

Any idea why Dell tech support told me to use diskpart.exe instead of the
Dell utility extpart.exe?

Thanks,

Jenny

My understanding of Diskpart.exe: It will only allow you to expand a Dynamic disk that is not a boot partition. If it is basic you can convert it to dynamic and reboot but it still cannot contain an OS, using Extpart.exe from Dell is a great alternative for this task. NB: you may need to run Extpart in safe mode to get it to work.