How to increase the size of an additional disk

Objective

If you have reached the maximum capacity on your additional disk, you can add more storage by increasing its size.

This guide explains how to increase the size of an additional disk and extend the main partition accordingly.

Requirements

• A VPS in your OVHcloud account
• An additional disk configured on the VPS
• Access to the OVHcloud Control Panel
• Administrative access via SSH or RDP to your VPS

Instructions

The following steps presume that you have configured an additional disk according to our guide.

Modifying the size of the disk

Log in to the OVHcloud Control Panel, go to the Bare Metal Cloud section and select your server from Virtual Private Servers.

In the Home tab, go to the section labelled Your configuration. Click on ... next to the option Additional disks and in the context menu click on Increase the disk size.

Choose the new disk size in the popup window, then click on Increase.

A message will appear to confirm your request. Click on the link inside the message box and follow the order process. A new browser tab opens to finalize the order.

After the payment is confirmed, the disk upgrade will take a few minutes. You can check the progress in the tab Additional disks: If your chosen new size is displayed, the disk is ready.

Extending the partition

On a Linux VPS

If a GNU/Linux distribution is installed on your VPS, establish an SSH connection to your server from the command line terminal or by using a SSH client application.

The examples below presume you are logged in as a user with elevated permissions.

Ensure that the disk is not mounted by using this command:

ubuntu@server:~$ sudo umount /mnt/disk

Replace /mnt/disk with your actual mount path to the additional disk, if needed.

Determine the names of disks and partitions:

ubuntu@server:~$ lsblk
NAME    MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0     7:0    0  63.2M  1 loop /snap/core20/1623
loop1     7:1    0  63.3M  1 loop /snap/core20/1828
loop2     7:2    0 111.9M  1 loop /snap/lxd/24322
loop3     7:3    0  49.8M  1 loop /snap/snapd/18357
loop4     7:4    0   103M  1 loop /snap/lxd/23541
sda       8:0    0   160G  0 disk
├─sda1    8:1    0 159.9G  0 part /
├─sda14   8:14   0     4M  0 part
└─sda15   8:15   0   106M  0 part /boot/efi
sdc       8:32   0   100G  0 disk
└─sdc1    8:33   0    50G  0 part 

In this example, the disk is named sdc and it has the correct new disk size of 100 GB after the upgrade explicated in the first part of this guide. The partition sdc1 exists on the disk and uses 50 GB.

Recreate the partition on the disk by running fdisk:

ubuntu@server:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sdc

Enter the following commands at the fdisk prompt:

Welcome to fdisk (util-linux 2.37.2).
Changes will remain in memory only, until you decide to write them.
Be careful before using the write command.

Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 1
Partition 1 has been deleted.

Command (m for help): n

Confirm each of the default values by pressing Enter:

Partition type
   p   primary (0 primary, 0 extended, 4 free)
   e   extended (container for logical partitions)
Select (default p):

Using default response p.
Partition number (1-4, default 1):
First sector (2048-209715199, default 2048):
Last sector, +/-sectors or +/-size{K,M,G,T,P} (2048-209715199, default 209715199):

Created a new partition 1 of type 'Linux' and of size 100 GiB.

Enter n and finally w:

Partition #1 contains a ext4 signature.

Do you want to remove the signature? [Y]es/[N]o: n

Command (m for help): w

The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

Verify the partition and extend the file system:

ubuntu@server:~$ sudo e2fsck -f /dev/sdc1
e2fsck 1.46.5 (30-Dec-2021)
/dev/sdc1: recovering journal
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
/dev/sdc1: 11/3276800 files (0.0% non-contiguous), 284558/13106944 blocks

ubuntu@server:~$ sudo resize2fs /dev/sdc1
resize2fs 1.46.5 (30-Dec-2021)
Resizing the filesystem on /dev/sdc1 to 26214144 (4k) blocks.
The filesystem on /dev/sdc1 is now 26214144 (4k) blocks long.

Finally, mount the disk:

ubuntu@server:~$ sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/disk/

Partition 1 is now using the full size of the disk.

ubuntu@server:~$ df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs           776M  992K  776M   1% /run
/dev/sda1       155G  2.2G  153G   2% /
tmpfs           3.8G     0  3.8G   0% /dev/shm
tmpfs           5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
/dev/sda15      105M  5.3M  100M   5% /boot/efi
tmpfs           776M  4.0K  776M   1% /run/user/1000
/dev/sdc1        99G   24K   94G   1% /mnt/disk

On a Windows VPS

If a Windows OS is installed on your VPS, establish a remote desktop (RDP) connection to your server.

Once logged in, right-click on the Start Menu button and open Disk Management.

The extended disk displays the additional capacity as unallocated space. Right-click on the volume of your additional disk and select Extend Volume from the context menu.

In the "Extend Volume Wizard", click on Next to proceed.

You can modify the disk space in this step if necessary. Click on Next.

Click on Finish to complete the process.

The resized volume now includes the additional disk space.

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