Expansion Overview

What Is Capacity Expansion?

If the capacity of an existing disk is insufficient, you can expand the disk capacity to increase the storage space.

Both system disks and data disks can be expanded. A system disk can be expanded to up to 1 TiB, and a data disk to 32 TiB. Disk capacity can only be expanded, not reduced.

If you detach a system disk and then attach it to an ECS as a data disk, the maximum capacity of this disk is still 1 TiB.

How to Expand the Disk Capacity?

A capacity expansion operation includes the following steps:

1. Expand the disk capacity on the management console.
2. Log in to the server and extend the disk partition and file system.

Figure 1 Capacity expansion procedure

Expand the Disk Capacity on the Management Console

Log In to the Server and Extend the Disk Partition and File System

After the disk has been expanded on the management console, only the disk storage capacity is enlarged, but its additional space cannot be used directly. You must log in to the server and extend the disk partition and file system. For details, see Table 1.

Table 1 Extending the disk partition and file system

Capacity After Expansion	Extend Disk Partition and File System
Disk capacity ≤ 2 TiB	Windows: Extending Disk Partitions and File Systems (Windows Server 2008) Linux: Partition and File System Extension Preparations (Linux)
Disk capacity > 2 TiB	GPT partition style: Extending Disk Partitions and File Systems (Windows Server 2008) or Partition and File System Extension Preparations (Linux) MBR partition style: Not supported The maximum disk capacity that MBR supports is 2 TiB, and the disk space exceeding 2 TiB cannot be used. If your disk uses MBR and you need to expand the disk capacity to over 2 TiB, change the partition style from MBR to GPT. Ensure that the disk data has been backed up before changing the partition style because services will be interrupted and data on the disk will be cleared during this change.

If the server is stopped during the expansion, the additional space of a Windows system disk, Windows data disk, or Linux system disk may be automatically added to the last partition after the server is started. In this case, the additional space can be directly used. If the additional space is not automatically added, extend the partition and file system according to the preceding steps.

Related Operations

For more expansion FAQs, see Capacity Expansion.