Windows 7: Need help to repartition hard drive but to keep all installed software

Hi All,

several months ago my laptop's hard drive was repartitioned by our tech services/administrators without consulting with me. I didn't have a large hard drive in the first place and what they did was that they created a smaller C drive (60 GB) and a larger F (data) drive (87 GB).

I am a developer and I need a lot of specific software to be installed on C drive, I have to have Visual Studio 2008 and 2010, SQL Server 2008, Office 2010, service packs, other work related software.

I uninstalled whatever I could from C drive, I keep cleaning it, remove logs etc.

After latest Windows updates I ran out of space on C drive. I have only 2 GB left. The only "solution" that tech services offered was to completely reformat my hard drive and repartiion it again. For me it means that I will have to spend a week re-installing all the software from scratch and possibly losing stuff in the process. I can't afford it because I have work to do.

Is there a way to repartition hard drive without wiping out all the installed programs, just to increase the size of the C drive and decrease the size of the F drive?

Why don't you just copy your files over onto F:/ if that's the data drive?

hi webgirl, welcome to sevenforums,

the good news is that it's pretty easy, but can be a bit time consuming, as loads of data needs to be shuffled around.

try downloading the excellent (and free) partition wizard which offers a nice gui for partitioning tasks.

you can do it using windows built-in diskmgmt.msc, but i prefer partition wizard.

saying that, most software should still work if installed on F:

"Why don't you just copy your files over onto F:/ if that's the data drive? " - I cannot just simply copy program files to data drive because program files are not data files. If a program is installed on C and I move files to F, program will not work.

Sounds like u really don't need the other partition so easiest would be to delete it and add the unallocated space back to C:\

DMHolt, it's a very good idea to keep your data and your OS on different partitions - if you ever need to reinstall windows, you won't have to worry about your data.

the OP merely wants to resize the partitions, not get rid of them completely.

webgirl, have you looked at my suggestion (above) yet?

I am going to ..
C partition is a little bit more protected. If some appication or even I are trying to write something to C drive, we can't. I need to provide Admin permission if I want to copy some file on C. Any program can write it's data on the data drive. This gives a little bit more security.

...an even better idea is having your data backed up elsewhere, so when you can't access the hdd you can reconstruct on a new hdd. Flash drives are getting cheap...and holding more data....

Webgirl, all you need do is reduce the size of your F drive from the left then extend the C drive to take up the resulting unallocated space.

Partition Wizard is an ideal tool for this job, as this tutorial explains.

Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD

It's just a pity that your drives are so small in the first place.

For that reason, I agree with DMHolt's suggestion of having all your data on an external drive, which would mean you could delete the F partition and extend C to take up all the drive space.

So should I try to use this Best Free Partition Manager Freeware for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition. ?
I don't know if I have enough space on disk left to install it ...
It's kind of scary, what if I mess up my machine completely