Can't resize my Partition

Ok so i am running windows 7 and vista on a dual boot Vista hard drive is C: while win7 is B: now i am kinda low on memory on B: and i wanted to re-size so i used "EASEUS Partition Master 6.5.2 Home Edition" and i shrinked C: and had 40gb unallocated space and i went to my C: drive and wanted to resize it but i could't. So i tried out disk management and i had no luck here too. So can any one tell me what i am doing wrong and how i can fix this? i just wanna get some gb out of C: and put it into C: my main/active hard drive.

Thanks in advance and please keep it simple as i am not much of a expert at this stuff

A "picture" (e.g. screenshot) of what DISKMGMT.MSC shows for your hard drive would be very helpful.

Depending on the physical layout of the two partitions on your drive, you many need to "move" things around as part of your goal to resize things to add some additional space to your Win7 partition.

Note that EACH OS sees itself as located on "C" when it is booted, but sees the other partition as a different drive letter (either D, or E, or you say B... whatever it initially was, or what you changed it to using DISKMGMT.MSC). What we really need to know though is the PHYSICAL layout of things on your hard drive, in order to prescribe an approach to accomplish what you want to accomplish.


I'd suggest you download and install Paritition Wizard (free) Home Edition v5.2 along with its standalone boot CD which you can burn by downloading this ISO file. The program itself runs under WinXP, Vista and Win7, so you can see drive letters (per the installed OS under which you run the program). But mostly, it will present the physical layout of the drive, which is what we need to see. A screenshot from PW would be helpful, although one from DISKMGMT.MSC is fine as well.

The standalone Partition Wizard boot CD is for emergencies, disaster/recovery, and for partition-related operations that cannot be performed while the Win7 operating system is active but must be run while standalone booted. It is very possible that you will need to use this standalone boot CD to accomplish the resize/relocate/move for your two partitions, as performing movement of OS partitions is normally not something that can occur while the OS is booted.

Please let us see a screenshot from DISKMGMT.MSC or Partition Wizard, of your hard drive layout.

dsperber said:

A "picture" (e.g. screenshot) of what DISKMGMT.MSC shows for your hard drive would be very helpful.

http://oi52.tinypic.com/f239xv.jpg

Ok here a picture of my hard drive setup and the hard drive (D: ) came along with my hard disk while (Z: ) is a recovery and (E: ) is just to place my junk and etc.

Hope this helps

Edit: i better head to bed , and hopefully i can give you guys more info.

Your HD is quite a mess, with the OS's on Logical Parititions along with the strange Recovery partition. The only reason it even boots is because it has a 97mb boot partition at the first of the HD, since Logical partitions cannot boot otherwise.

It's doubtful the Recovery partition is still useful since it is only 4gb and is blocking the way from resizing to the left into E which is almost empty.

So what I would do is either shrink E or move its data off to Delete it, then delete the Recovery Partition if you don't need it. Then you can use free Partition Wizard bootable CD to Resize Win7 to the left into the space you have made.

Back up your data, Let us know exactly what you want to do and we will give you the exact steps.

gregrocker said:

So what I would do is either shrink E or move its data off to Delete it, then delete the Recovery Partition if you don't need it. Then you can use free Partition Wizard bootable CD to Resize Win7 to the left into the space you have made.

Agreed.

You should boot to the Partition Wizard bootable CD, where all of this can be done at once. As was recommended, if you have data you would cry about if you lost it, you should first back it up just to be safe.

Then, using Partition Wizard's functions:

(1) Reduce the size of E (since 230Gb of its 250GB is currently free). The newly available free space will eventually be added to your Win7 partition.

(2) Either delete that "4GB recovery partition" or simply move it left (i.e. specify it as having 0 free space to its left, and all of the free space to its right).

(3) Move the Win7 partition to the left, probably using all of the newly available free space (i.e. having 0 free space to its left and 0 free space to its right, thus expanding it to consume all of the free space you manufactured by (a) reducing E and (b) eliminating Z.

(4) "Apply" the operations you've enumerated.

You're done.