How to create Windows boot partition greater than 2TB

[Adam Hems]

Hello - I am using Windows Server 2012 R2 and need a large boot partition for some legacy software that expects all of it's data to be on the local C:\ drive. I have more than 2TB of data. 

On-prem I do this by creating a GPT Partition (instead of MBR) when installing Windows to a disk that is greater than 2TB (virtual or bare-metal).

In GCE, I can create a Windows VM with a 10TB disk no problem but it comes up on an MBR Partition which has a maximum size of 2TB (see screenshot). Attempting to extend this partition to use the other 8TB fails. 

 How do I do boot Windows on a disk with a boot partition greater than 2TB in GCE?

[Kamran (Google Cloud Support)]

Hello Adam,

As mentioned in this article:

All Windows images will automatically resize the root partition up to 2 TB limit. Even if the disk is larger than 2 TB, the operating system only recognizes up to 2 TB.

That being said, unfortunately you can not create a partition with more 2 TB in size. However, please feel free to open a feature request for this on our GCE public issue tracking system.

Thank you,

Kamran

[Josh Moyer]

Hello Adam,

In addition to filing a feature request, you might want to investigate using junction points to make more storage available under C: by redirecting a directory there to another volume with more space.  There's a Wikipedia article with more information at [1].

Kind Regards,

Josh Moyer

Google Cloud Platform Support

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point

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[ravi sachidanandam]

can I do this on some linux flavor ? apparently even that defaults to 2TB and I am not able to change this, why does it let me select a large boot drive (larger than 2 TB) when it has no mechanism to allow this ?

On Saturday, November 14, 2015 at 11:01:51 AM UTC-5, Adam Hems wrote: