Windows 7: Partition Wizard

It was recommended to use the free Partition Wizard to Move/Resize a partition for Windows 7.

This is what I have now:
C drive = 200 gb
D drive = 50 gb
E drive = 50 gb

What I want to do is take 150 gb from drive C and add it to drive E. I realize it is going to take two operations to do this. First C drive must be resize to 50 gb which creates unallocate to 150 gb. Then I have to resize E drive to 200 gb by using the 150 gb of the unallocated space.

I followed the tutorial for PW by opening PW and selecting C drive, this activated the Menues so I could select Move/Resize Partion from a couple of places. This opened the following window:



That shows that I am using Enhanced Data Protecting Mode.

All I should have to do is change the "Unallocate Space After", which shows as active, however it will not allow me to go from 0.00 MB to the 150000.00 that I want.

Hope someone can shed some light on this.

Thanks

Will it let you change the partition size?

GParted live for cd and have fun moving the D partition forward once the C primary is reduced in size! That's right! Once you shrink the C down from 200gb to 50gb you then have to move the D partition first before you can even think of expanding the E partition that may also need to be moved forward as well in order to maintain it's integrity.

The advice? It will take a little more then one step, two step routine! First you are giong to making some drastic changes to the drive's layout and will want to Back everything important up! The "Ultimate" word of caution there in case something goes sideways on you?

The best move would be to first back things up from the C and then shrink that down to where you want it. Forget about expanding E but replacing it with a brand new partition in the empty space opened up where C was! Much easier!

Was that so hard now? With the new let's say G partition your next move would be temporarily backing things up from the present D partition as you copy contents from the E over to it. Once done you dump the present afterwards you simply move the D towards the back of the drive allowing room to expand the new G out from 150gb to the desired 200gb.

Hi Huffman,

Can you post a screenshot of the PW main window?

That way we can see your partitions and understand what you want to do.

You can't change the Unallocated space before or after the partition - because there is no unallocated space.

You need to create some first. Either by adjusting the middle option for partition size - or ( easier) dragging the edge of the partition.

If Your first partition is C, second is D and third is E ( reading left to right):

1. Rt click C , select Resize/Move.

Grab hold of the RIGHT edge of the C partition and drag it 150gb to the left.

Click Ok, click Apply.

2. Rt click D , select Resize/Move

Grab the RIGHT edge and push the D partition all the way left - across the grey bit.

Click OK , click Apply

That will take a while as data has to be moved.

3. Rt click E and slect Resize/Move.

Grab the RIGHT edge and push the E partition all the way to left - over the grey bit , then drag the right edge out as far right as it will go.

Click OK, click Apply.

Again will take a few mins. as data needs to be moved.

The other thing I could add would be knowing just how drive space is free on the C primary before even making the attempt at reducing it. If you have 60gb presently on it at the moment oops! You will then have to remove things there to free up the primary before making any attempt.

One thing you won't be able to do and not while in the Disk Management tool is attempting to shrink the C primary you are running Windows from. For that you will need a 3rd party drive partitioning tool like GParted or another to avoid the problems typically when trying to resize any partition while running the OS installed on it.

While there are a few "workarounds"? for the unmovable files known to be present that's usually something left for the advanced user to test on their own. With multiple drives in use here you can see where the drives were originally split up for the 7 beta builds and later cleaned off for the RCs once XP and Vista were removed.

The original XP and Vista primaries were both shrunk down using GParted live to allow for both 32/64bit flavors of the beta builds at the time. Those later became recovery partitions when trying out the backup tools now seen in 7 and eventually new images were stored on the additional storage drives now in use.

You can see from the screenshot how much used space is on that partition - it's the yellow bit.

Partition Wizard will do the job perfectly well, and very simply.

It's not only what is on C that will make the difference. That was simply a caution when planning any resizing of partitions. You first need to know how much drive space is used. The same will apply for the D and E partitions huffman has on the drive there.

The first thing anyone will advise from the start however is making sure anything important is backed up from the drive itself especially anything unreplacable before making any large changes in case of any mishap. The advantage of having extra drives here is being able to nuke any one of the 3 OS drives soon to be only 2 at any time or if? anything crashes.

I don't think you will see much on the full main screen, so I added just a part of it.

Go from here:

Cdrive:
Used Space 25.0 GB
Free Space 175 GB

Ddrive:
Used Space 1.96 GB
Free Space 46.7 GB

Edrive:
Used Space 40.9 GB
Free Space 7.89 GB


I have old images of C and D drives by acronis, however I will make new ones before attempting anything else.

I remember one time looking at GParted and could not make heads or tails of it, but I will look at it again.

I thought it was a good idea to create the unallocated space and then making that new partition.

You are absoluely correct that I can't do this in Disk Management. No matter which partition is selected, all the shrink and expand options are greyed out.

I do really appreiate the quick responses. Next time when I install Win 7, I will pay more attention to what I am doing, although I would swear on a stack of bibles that I set the partitions as I wanted at the time.

Thanks Again

I think I am really screwed this time .

I used PM and was able to shrink C drive as I wanted to. I now have three partitions all about the same size of 50 GB.

There were three areas of unallocated space of which two are insignificant and the third is the one I want to make into a new partition because it is 151 GB.

First I tried to use PM to create the partition but when I highlighted the unallocated space and actived "Create Partition", now when I click "Create Partition" I get the following message.

"Partition Wizard cannot create a partition at here. There is no free MBR slots on the disk".

I tried to google and find some information on how to fix this problem and there were actually some there. The problem is I don't any thing they are saying. Mainly they were saying I screwed up big time.

So now I am back here begging for help. Any is greatly appreciated.

Thank you

BTW I forgot to give this info, in Windows Disk Management the unallocated space does show as 151 GB. When I right click on that space, the only options are "New Simple Volume". I don't have a clue what that would do if I used it.

I think I have covered it all.

Thanks