Re-partitioning Hard Drive

I used that program, merged the partition however it then made windows do a boot loop, I just inserted my usb with windows 7 and repaired it. Thanks for the advice on the program, it did what I wanted it to (merging the partitions). It eventually worked out. I don't know what happened though, it was merging them and I calculated it to take around 15 minutes in my head. I started playing a phone game then all of a sudden the computer restarted I guess it was on about 60-70% at the most. The power didn't go out and my PC doesn't randomly restart. I don't know why it did what it did. If this problem happens to anyone else though at least you know what to do.


Figured since u guys helped me I could at least post results.

darkf0xx said:

I used that program, merged the partition however it then made windows do a boot loop, I just inserted my usb with windows 7 and repaired it.

I'm not clear on when this "boot loop" occurred, or exactly what you're describing. Are you saying it worked on something for a while, and then re-booted by itself, and then kept repeating... i.e. re-booting itself forever? Or is it something else?

I can understand that maybe once would Partition Magic self-initiate a reboot, during that pre-Windows stage (if you had done the C-reconfiguration while under Windows, as opposed to running from the standalone bootable CD where everything could be done at once and without needing a re-boot). But certainly no more than absolutely just once. So if you for some reason did see an "infinite re-boot loop", well that definitely should not have occurred. I have never seen that, and I've re-sized C many times on many machines.

How and when did get an opportunity to interrupt it to stop this process? And you just did a "repair" from the USB Windows installation drive to correct this? Honestly, never saw this issue myself. Anyway I'm glad you got the job done, and are now working as you had wanted.


However I'm very puzzled by that new screenshot. How do you have TWO INTERNAL HARD DRIVES?? They look identical except for the fact that the 100MB "system reserved" partition on the second drive is not marked ACTIVE, whereas the one on the first drive is. And the 2TB drive is mostly that J partition, which is only 8% free, being 92% utilized. Where did this drive come from suddenly?? And is that 100MB "system reserved" partition left over from some old other machine that you took the hard drive out of and just now added to this machine??

Did you install a second internal drive during this whole project? I have no idea what your "dark drive" J is?? I don't know whether this is related to your earlier "re-boot loop" symptom, either being a cause or result of your re-partitioning steps.

Can you explain why this latest final screenshot shows TWO hard drives?? I'm wondering if that second drive had its own ACTIVE 100MB partition on it, and when you installed it on this machine the BIOS made the new drive the first in the boot sequence???

Really, the sudden appearance of a second 2TB internal hard drive with what looks like a boot manager 100MB "system reserved" partition of its own (even if it's not now ACTIVE) is very very mysterious.

Please tell the story of what that second internal drive really is, and how it got there suddenly.

It looks correct. Again all you needed to do was delete the last two partitions in Disk Mgmt, extend C. No need for a special program at all.

The 100mb on the second hard drive is too small to bother with. Is it also an OS drive? If so do you want to make it independently bootable?

dsperber said:

darkf0xx said:

I used that program, merged the partition however it then made windows do a boot loop, I just inserted my usb with windows 7 and repaired it.

I'm not clear on when this "boot loop" occurred, or exactly what you're describing. Are you saying it worked on something for a while, and then re-booted by itself, and then kept repeating... i.e. re-booting itself forever? Or is it something else?

I can understand that maybe once would Partition Magic self-initiate a reboot, during that pre-Windows stage (if you had done the C-reconfiguration while under Windows, as opposed to running from the standalone bootable CD where everything could be done at once and without needing a re-boot). But certainly no more than absolutely just once. So if you for some reason did see an "infinite re-boot loop", well that definitely should not have occurred. I have never seen that, and I've re-sized C many times on many machines.

How and when did get an opportunity to interrupt it to stop this process? And you just did a "repair" from the USB Windows installation drive to correct this? Honestly, never saw this issue myself. Anyway I'm glad you got the job done, and are now working as you had wanted.


However I'm very puzzled by that new screenshot. How do you have TWO INTERNAL HARD DRIVES?? They look identical except for the fact that the 100MB "system reserved" partition on the second drive is not marked ACTIVE, whereas the one on the first drive is. And the 2TB drive is mostly that J partition, which is only 8% free, being 92% utilized. Where did this drive come from suddenly?? And is that 100MB "system reserved" partition left over from some old other machine that you took the hard drive out of and just now added to this machine??

Did you install a second internal drive during this whole project? I have no idea what your "dark drive" J is?? I don't know whether this is related to your earlier "re-boot loop" symptom, either being a cause or result of your re-partitioning steps.

Can you explain why this latest final screenshot shows TWO hard drives?? I'm wondering if that second drive had its own ACTIVE 100MB partition on it, and when you installed it on this machine the BIOS made the new drive the first in the boot sequence???

Really, the sudden appearance of a second 2TB internal hard drive with what looks like a boot manager 100MB "system reserved" partition of its own (even if it's not now ACTIVE) is very very mysterious.

Please tell the story of what that second internal drive really is, and how it got there suddenly.

The second hard drive is my external hard drive(dark drive). I don't know why it started to boot loop but it would start up then do the system checks and things then get to the windows 7 orbs and I would see a quick bsod and then it would go back to the beginning. I just put in my usb flash drive with windows 7 in it and pressed F8 on boot for it to bring up the boot device manager and directed it to my flash drive. The extra 100mb partitions on both drives are confusing to me also, I never initiated them, those are windows 7's doing. 100mbs doesn't bother me though, they are hidden unless I go to drive manager, so I'm not going to even mess with them due to the boot loop from the first time.

darkf0xx said:

The second hard drive is my external hard drive(dark drive).The extra 100mb partitions on both drives are confusing to me also, I never initiated them, those are windows 7's doing. 100mbs doesn't bother me though, they are hidden unless I go to drive manager, so I'm not going to even mess with them due to the boot loop from the first time.

Did you maybe build your own external drive, using a hard drive formerly living in some other Win7 machine? Or did you upgrade your old 2TB hard drive in this machine for a new 2TB hard drive, and then re-purposed the old one into an external enclosure or via USB adapter for use as a backup drive?

Seems like the only possible way you could have gotten a 100MB partition would have been a previous incarnation as a Win7 system drive. I see at the moment that space is "unallocated", but in my opinion it most likely was a real "system reserved" partition at one time.

I'm still wondering about that "re-boot/BSOD loop", and the fact that this 100MB space is now unallocated. I wonder if it was the Windows Repair you did (from your USB installation drive to cure the re-boot loop) which perhaps was responsible for this 100MB space becoming "unallocated". Otherwise I honestly can't imagine how it got created at one time, but now is "unallocated".

Anyway, enough time spent thinking about this mystery. If your internal hard drive is now configured as you want, and you can once again boot normally, then it's "case closed". But honestly, I've never experienced any problem resulting from using Partition Wizard, so it's a bit embarrassing that you had any hiccup whatsoever... which thankfully you were able to recover from easily.

Mission accomplished.

dsperber said:

darkf0xx said:

The second hard drive is my external hard drive(dark drive).The extra 100mb partitions on both drives are confusing to me also, I never initiated them, those are windows 7's doing. 100mbs doesn't bother me though, they are hidden unless I go to drive manager, so I'm not going to even mess with them due to the boot loop from the first time.

Did you maybe build your own external drive, using a hard drive formerly living in some other Win7 machine? Or did you upgrade your old 2TB hard drive in this machine for a new 2TB hard drive, and then re-purposed the old one into an external enclosure or via USB adapter for use as a backup drive?

Seems like the only possible way you could have gotten a 100MB partition would have been a previous incarnation as a Win7 system drive. I see at the moment that space is "unallocated", but in my opinion it most likely was a real "system reserved" partition at one time.

I'm still wondering about that "re-boot/BSOD loop", and the fact that this 100MB space is now unallocated. I wonder if it was the Windows Repair you did (from your USB installation drive to cure the re-boot loop) which perhaps was responsible for this 100MB space becoming "unallocated". Otherwise I honestly can't imagine how it got created at one time, but now is "unallocated".

Anyway, enough time spent thinking about this mystery. If your internal hard drive is now configured as you want, and you can once again boot normally, then it's "case closed". But honestly, I've never experienced any problem resulting from using Partition Wizard, so it's a bit embarrassing that you had any hiccup whatsoever... which thankfully you were able to recover from easily.

Mission accomplished.

The external hard drive is actually only 3 weeks old I bought it because my other one was getting old and I wanted a back up as well as an upgrade, thanks again for the help.

If DISK1 is an external drive then it's had an OS installed upon it judging by the System REserved partition which is now deleted. This means that since the drive was not wiped it could have boot code interfering with the OS when you plug it in. If it continues to be a problem we can help you move the data off to wipe it properly of boot code with Diskpart Clean Command then repartition in Disk Mgmt.

gregrocker said:

If DISK1 is an external drive then it's had an OS installed upon it judging by the System REserved partition which is now deleted. This means that since the drive was not wiped it could have boot code interfering with the OS when you plug it in. If it continues to be a problem we can help you move the data off to wipe it properly of boot code with Diskpart Clean Command then repartition in Disk Mgmt.

its never had any os installed, it only started doing that after using that program to merge the partitions.

It would not have an old System Reserved partition on the external if it never had an OS. Do you know how it got there? If its there then we have to assume it has bootable code, so if it interferes further the next step is to move the data off and wipe the drive of that code. This has only worked here about a thousand times before.

darkf0xx said:

its never had any os installed, it only started doing that after using that program to merge the partitions.

That external second drive was not even shown in your first screenshot. Was the drive not plugged in at that time?? All that is shown in your earlier screenshot was your one internal hard drive DISK0, and removable disks for DISK1 (G) and DISK2 (H).

In your latest screenshot, you show DISK1 as "dark drive", and now removable G and H appear as DISK2 and DISK3. That's very different than before.

Did it always have 92% utilized and 8% free? Did you suddenly plug in your external hard drive? Was that before or after you used Partition Wizard simply to delete the rightmost partitions on what was DISK0 and "merge" that now unallocated free space on DISK0 in with the large C-partition to its left... all on DISK0. This is what resulted in the now once again single large C-partition on DISK0.

So how and when did this DISK1 "dark drive" suddenly appear?

Using Partition Wizard to do the partition changes you wanted to do is limited to one hard drive. It doesn't work across multiple drives, except if it's involved in "copying a partition" from one drive to another, etc. You wouldn't have been using this function in your "merge" or "resize" task of this thread's subject. You simply would have re-sized C on DISK0 to absorb all of its newfound free-space to its right, which was free by deleting those two unwanted partitions shown in your very first screenshot.

I still want to hear how/when this 2TB "dark drive" DISK1 suddenly appeared? It's strangely identical in size to your DISK0 internal drive, and it has the identical 100MB "system reserved" on it with the rest of the drive allocated to what appears to have been one large C-partition at one time. And yet, unlike your real C it is 92% utilized.

Can you clarify?