Add capacity to almost-full dynamic disk volume

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confuxion

confuxion

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I have a dynamic disk volume made up of 4 spanned 1TB WD Green drives. I have used up 76% of the volume's 3.63TB of usable storage, so I was hoping I could buy another disk (hopefully of the 4TB variety, but I'm not sure if I can mix-and-match various capacities in the same dynamic volume) and add it to the existing volume without losing any data. I'd essentially be doubling the volume's usable space, but I don't know if this scenario is possible, much less the specifics of how I'd go about adding the new disc to the existing volume.

On a somewhat related note, I've got software that can supposedly only manage dynamic volumes up to 5TB in size (AOMEI Dynamic Disk Manager). Does anyone know of any software that functions in the same way, but will allow management of dynamic volumes over 5TB in size?

Any friendly help is much appreciated, as I'm no storage guru!
 
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popatim
rule#1 - always make a backup before messing with your drives.
rule #2 - verify your backup is good.

as long as the current dymanic volume partition goes to the end of the drive (minus 8mb windows reserves) its simple to extend the dynamic volume to the next drive. No data is lost because windows just adds the drive to 'pool'. No data is transferred or anything. You run into problems when the end of your dynamic volume has another partition after it; you can only extend to the next drive by first getting rid of that pesky partition and adding the space to to the pool and then adding the drive. the drive must be fully unallocated for the extend volume option to be available.
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confuxion

confuxion

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I should have been more specific in my initial post. I want to add a blank 4tb disk to a dynamic volume which already has a ton of data on it, and end up with a new, spanned volume that's twice the capacity yet still has all my data intact like it did before adding the new 4tb disk. Are there any caveats I need to know in doing this the way you suggested?

Also, will I have to do anything to the 4tb drive I'll be adding to the existing 4tb dynamic volume beforehand? Does it need to be formatted at the very least? Anything else?

And then once I have the new dynamic volume, which will total 8tb, what software can I use to manage it? AOMEI Dynamic Disk Manager says that it only works on dynamic volumes up to 5tb in size.

 
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popatim

popatim

Titan
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rule#1 - always make a backup before messing with your drives.
rule #2 - verify your backup is good.

as long as the current dymanic volume partition goes to the end of the drive (minus 8mb windows reserves) its simple to extend the dynamic volume to the next drive. No data is lost because windows just adds the drive to 'pool'. No data is transferred or anything. You run into problems when the end of your dynamic volume has another partition after it; you can only extend to the next drive by first getting rid of that pesky partition and adding the space to to the pool and then adding the drive. the drive must be fully unallocated for the extend volume option to be available.
 
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