Extend a basic disk - KB325590

Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.general (More info?)

I just read KB article 325590, titled "How to use Diskpart.exe to extend
a data volume in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, and in Windows
2000".

It says this:

"Use the extend command to incorporate unallocated space into an
existing volume while preserving the data. [Extend is a sub-command of
Diskpart]

The following are the requirements for the extend command:
• The volume must be formatted with the NTFS file system.
• For Basic volumes, the unallocated space for the extension must be the
next contiguous space on the same disk.
• For Dynamic Volumes, the unallocated space can be any empty space on
any Dynamic disk on the system."

Saying the VOLUME must be formatted with the NTFS file system might be
an error; you don't format volumes, you format partitions, right?
What's a volume, anyway? (I know the meaning of "partition", "disk",
"basic", and "dynamic".)

First, the terminology is confusing: extending a partition on a volume
sounds too similar to creating extended partitions that hold logical
drives; I wish this article (and the command) used different words since
they are different things.

Does extending an NTFS partition (on a basic volume) into contiguous,
previously unallocated space actually resize the NTFS volume, the same
way that Partition Magic and friends do? Is the new partition really
one partition, the same as if it had been originally allocated with the
larger size?

Obviously, if I had extended an NTFS partition on a dynamic volume into
some non-contiguous free space, it wouldn't look like one partition. If
I had extended an NTFS partition on a dynamic volume into free space
that happened to be contiguous, would the system mark this as a two-
piece volume, or combine the two pieces into one volume the way it seems
to do if you extend a partition on a basic volume?

I extended a partition on a basic disk, and ran diskmap afterwards, and
it *seems* to be one normal partition, but I'm looking for assurance and
any comments.

Thanks.

David Walker