Resizing Partitions 5

[melburstein]

I am trying to use Disk Management in Windows 7 Home Premium and having problems. My 250GB drive was partitioned by Dell into 4. I want to increase the Primary Partition (C) from 58.59GB to 250GB by reducing the size of the Logical Partition (D) that is currently 397.30GB in size. The other two partitions don't matter because I am just trying to shift space from D to C.

I am able to Shrink D. This creates an unnamed partition with free space. But I can't figure out how to move that space into C:. I am unable to Expand C. I ended up restoring D to its original size.

Can someone please tell me step-by-step how I can move space from D to C.

THANK YOU

Mel

 

[tlcscousin]

I dont think you can do what you want with partitioning software. When you shrink the volume it removes the part of the partition at the end of the partition.What then happens is you cant add the partition to C because between C and the free space D still exists (C>>D>>freespace)

 

[melburstein]

tlcscousin,

That does, indeed, seem to be what is happening. Is there other software, or a different technique, that will allow me to increase the size of C by stealing space from D?

Mel

 

[whosrdaddy]

- take an image with acronis, ghost, whateevr imaging tool you like.

- restore the image, most tools provide an option to set the partition sizes at restore time.

/Daddy

-----------------------------------------------------
What You See Is What You Get
Never underestimate tha powah of tha google!

 

[Nelviticus]

I think the problem is that when you shrink a partition it only moves the end point, not the start, so when you shrink D you end up with C first, then a small D, then some unpartitioned space. So you end up with this:

------------------------
|C    |D    | (empty)  |
------------------------

rather than this:

------------------------
|C    | (empty)  |D    |
------------------------

As partitions must be contiguous you can't extend C to the other side of D.

Is there anything on D at the moment? If not you could delete D altogether, extend C a bit then re-create D in the remaining free space (see this article for how to shrink and extend partitions).

Don't forget, back up first!

Regards

Nelviticus

 

[Freestone]

I think tlcscousin meant to say "I dont think you can do what you want without partitioning software"

I've read good reports on the forums here about EASEUS partition tool. The free edition has restrictions, Windows 7 32-bit only, is only one.

http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

http://www.partition-tool.com/easeus-partition-manager/comparison.html

Parted Magic is another free tool:

http://partedmagic.com/

I've no experience with either (only Acronis' dated Disk Director). And as Nelviticus said, back up your data first.

 

[tlcscousin]

I dont think any partititioning software will do that kind of thing without losing data. You could try shrinking the d and then move all the data to the new partition change the drive letters to reflect D on the new partition wipe what was D and then remove the partition and expand C into the new free space. I would ghost or use other software to clone the disks just in case and of course backup everything.

 

[Freestone]

I dont think any partititioning software will do that kind of thing without losing data.

This is simply not true, and hasn't been for years...at least since the days of the old Partition Magic software. There is always a chance of losing data/partitioning information when doing a resize and/or move, but data is not lost at all when operations proceed normally.


Think about it. If you couldn't resize partitions without data loss, what is the point of this type of software?

 

[tf1]

As the other have said, you cannot do this without an additional utility because Windows is unable to join the non-contiguous areas of disk.

I find Acronis Disk Director Suite particularly easy to use.


Regards: Terry

 

[Freestone]

Yes, Acronis Disk Director is a great tool for this purpose. It is getting a bit dated in that I've not got it to recognize AHCI mode drives when it's booted from its own CD.

And for what it is worth, I just loaded EASEUS free Partition Master on my Windows 7 32-bit machine, took space from the beginning of D: and joined it to C:, all from within Windows without even a reboot. This is depicted by Nelviticus' second diagram above. Having said that, it takes time to move that data upwards on D: drive to free up the beginning area. If you have very little data, it may be better timewise to back D: up, delete D: drive and partition, take some space for C: then recreate D:

 

[melburstein]

Problem solved! Thanks to the valuable posts all of you provided.

I tried again and again to do the repartitioning using the Disk Management software that is included in Windows 7. After doing an Acronis image backup, I even deleted drive D. Still I was unable to expand C to use the available space.

So, I restored the hard drive back to the original state and purchased an EASUS Partition Manager single user license. I am running a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium and the free demo version of EASUS does not permit the actual repartitioning to take place.

So using the paid version ($47.99), I was able to change my drive to a 250.0GB drive C and a 205.0GB drive D. Now there is room to load my application software programs on drive C.

Thank you again, everyone for all the help.

Mel