Hard Drive Partitions - Changing with GParted

Just wondering...

Couldn't you accomplish the same thing by imaging the original partition, deleting it, then restoring the image to the FRONT of the unallocated space, and then just extending that to the right? It seems like that would be a lot faster than waiting for GParted to move the entire original partition to the left. I'm not sure how this would affect the boot, but I would think the Win 7 disc could repair that the same way it would fix boot problems after a GParted move.

Damon

Roxio has the same feature to burn an iso file as ImgBurn does, it is just a little faster is all. I have use ImgBurn before and yes it is a great program.

I have used ImgBurn all the time and is a great program, but roxio has the same feature to burn iso files.

DWillens said:

Just wondering...

Couldn't you accomplish the same thing by imaging the original partition, deleting it, then restoring the image to the FRONT of the unallocated space, and then just extending that to the right? It seems like that would be a lot faster than waiting for GParted to move the entire original partition to the left. I'm not sure how this would affect the boot, but I would think the Win 7 disc could repair that the same way it would fix boot problems after a GParted move.

Damon

Damon;

Your method is sound. Not sure if faster applies? Perhaps you could experiment by doing it both ways and reporting back with the time taken for each?

In the example, the objective was to give more room to the second partition, the Windows 7 partition, and avoid a reinstall. That doesn't mean the same thing couldn't be achieved another way.

The bootsector code was not affected and was able to locate and boot the the 7 partition without any problems.

Cheers!

Robert

I didn't have time to do the whole gParted move process, but backing up the partition using Macrium Reflect took as follows: 15 min to backup, 15 min to verify image, and 15 min to restore the backup over the newly created 40gb partition. Actually, Macrium created the new partition itself as part of the restore process. No problem whatsoever!

One caveat though. I had already generalized my BCD for the Win7 partition before I imaged it using the instructions here:

Multibooters, Vista Dual and Multibooting - Cloning Vista

If I had not done this, I believe that I would have had problems upon rebooting my system, as a result of the change in partition offset. I had this problem on a prior occasion and it was really nasty to fix. I then learned of this BCD trick and I have not had any problems with imaging and moving partitions since then. I think you could also just put in the Win7 disc and use the repair option, which also has been said to work well.

Damon

Hi Damon,

Yes. it works fine that way - I use Macrium , it backs up at a rate of around 2gb a minute.

Another way ( if the space is large enough) is to use the Copy partition function on Paragon partition manager.

It will update bcd as part of the process. Then just mark the newly copied partition Active, reboot and delete the original. That would probably be a bit quicker.

I have tried ImgBurn also and same results as Roxio 8. It is still not a boot disc.

huffman said:

I have tried ImgBurn also and same results as Roxio 8. It is still not a boot disc.

That is odd ... cause could be anything?

I would suggest you use this site:

http://www.allbootdisks.com/iso.html

to get one of their small, 2MB iso images, and try burning the image into a bootable disc. Then go into the computer bios and disable all boot devices except for the CD-rewriter drive and try again to boot to your new CD. If successful, get another copy of the systemrescuecd-x86-1.x.x.iso and try again.

There are only five components:

The iso image
The burning software
The CD media
The CD-ROM Drive
The Motherboard BIOS

Eliminate each one as the cause, one by one.

Robert

This is getting more complicated than it should be. The reason I made the original post was to fine a partitioning management software that was simple to use and would allow me to adjust the size of a partition.

The reason I wanted to adjust partition size is that I made a mistake installing Win 7. When I installed Win 7, I used it to partition the hard drive (600gb sata) with C drive to be 50gb, D drive 50gb and the remainer as E drive.

I know for fact the right numbers were put in originally, and I did not pay attention to partition sizes which were really as follows:
C drive 500gb, D drive 50 and E drive 500 (really makes me feel stupid). I want to be able to set the partition to sizes I orignally wanted without having to jump through hoops. I can live with it like it is until Win 7 final comes out next month if need be, then repartition when I clean install the new Win 7.

For what ever reason the option to resize a partition does not appear in Disk Management and besides if it did, I understand when C drive is reduced in size, another partition is created. Don't really know if that is true or not.

Actually every partition resizer I came across created that additional partition. I really don't want to do that.

Hope that is clearer than mud .

Thanks

You might see if recreating the partition table entries with Disk Management will do the trick .

Try using Disk Management to shrink the 7 partition a little - 1 or 2 gb should be fine.

Then use Disk Management to extend it again.

See if that helps.