Windows 7: Weird partitioning

7 Pro 64

OK, when I first partitioned I split a large drive up into 3 partitions. I had a lot of movies on one so it took a lot of space. Over time I have shrunk it and added that space to my games partition. But now it's a mess. Everything seems to work fine but there isn't even a sidescroll for this window so I can't even see all the segments on this drive now.



Is there a way to clean it up so it just shows the 3 partitions in 3 segments?

First, any solution you employ will require you to back up all your data. If you have a external drive that works best.

One simple solution would be to move data out of unwanted partitions and then, when they are empty, delete them.

Because Windows Disk Management works with a left to right orientation (for resizing partitions) it would be best to start with the partition all the way to the right and then work back to the left.

As each partition is deleted it will become unallocated space. You can wait until you have deleted all of the unwanted partitions and then re-size the remaining 3 using the one big unallocated space. Or you can re-size each remaining partition to the left of the new unallocated space to use it up until you have created a partition roughly the size you want/need.

This entire process will be much easier if there is no data on the partitions - that is why the backup is important. Otherwise you need to shuffle the data from one partition to another as you re-size.

There is always the danger of lost data when doing the shuffling routine. And most times there is simply not enough space to put everything as the partitions are deleted or when re-sizing them. I can't stress enough that you would be best advised to just back up everything to another disk. Then, even easier, you could then just format the entire drive (deleting everything) and then create 3 new partitions the size you want and copy everything back. A lot faster!

The other issue you have is that your disk 1 is set up as a Dynamic Disk. I don't know if you did that purposefully for reason, or if it was unintentional. If unintentional then you might want to take this opportunity to change that to a Basic Disk : Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk . Again, it is important to back up all of your data before performing this, as all data on the drive will be erased.

Thanks, that's what I was afraid of. I can't tell what is on each seperate section there so don't know how to move it around, but also doubt I'd have enough space to shuffle anyway.

Looking at getting another HD soon anyway so I'll probably just wait and reformat everything then.

I haven't had any performance issues as far as I can tell anyway.

Dynamic is offered once you reach the four partition limit. A better way to go is to create the fourth partition as Logical (Extended) so you can keep adding partitions until you run out of letters.

Dynamic is meant to be used to span partition over different HD's, not for a single small HD.

You can convert the Dynamic to Basic non-destructively by using free Partition Wizard v.4.2 as it is a paid feature in the newer versions: partition wizard 4.2 free.zip - Windows Live