Hard Drive Partitions - Changing with GParted

The Windows 7 "Disk Management" utility fulfills some basic partition management functions. However it is limited. The Open Source GParted is a full featured partition management utility and is easy to use. In the following example, the Windows 7 partition (labled X) needed to be expanded. Unfortunately, as it was the second partition, Windows 7 was unable to move the partition to the left and absorb the unallocated space.

Here, step by step, is how to use GParted to change the partition size:
After you reboot into Windows (be sure to remove the CD), "checkdisk" may want to check your file system. That is OK, let it finish. The X: partition, in this example, should now be nearly 10GB bigger.

Robert

Nice find on the System Rescue CD.. As a long time Linux user, I have used gparted quite a few times.. A Ubuntu Live cd is always in my toolkit for instances like these...

Another fine tutorial..

Tews said:

Nice find on the System Rescue CD.. As a long time Linux user, I have used gparted quite a few times.. A Ubuntu Live cd is always in my toolkit for instances like these...

Another fine tutorial..

Click to expand...

Thanks Tews!

Actually, thanks should go to DarkDavil for the inspiration to put this together and the collaboration with Dave76 and Night Hawk who made valuable contributions to the thread. I was sort of in a hurry at the time, but I though it might be easier to find if I moved it here so search could find it.

Many thanks!

Robert

Good Tutorial Robert

Did you ask about putting it in tutorials?

zigzag3143 said:

Good Tutorial Robert

Did you ask about putting it in tutorials?

Click to expand...

There is a lot of software. Whereas some of it, like this Open Source utility, can be useful, it is not Windows or Windows 7 specific. It is just too easy to clutter up the Windows Seven Tutorials with everybody's favorite prog, when the Tutorials should, at least in my opinion, feature Windows and Windows 7 specific software. This is fine. It is here and search can find it. Its not about credit. Its about helping.

Robert

I believe that someone said Gparted is not Windows Specific so I was just curious if it works on Win XP ??

Thanks

This I did from Win XP because I don't have a burner setup right now on the Win 7 machine.

I must have done something wrong. I downloaded systemrescuecd-x86-1.2.3.iso. I then burned the disc image file using Roxio. As far as I can see, it is not boot disc. Any clues ???

Thanks

huffman said:

I believe that someone said Gparted is not Windows Specific so I was just curious if it works on Win XP ??

Thanks

Click to expand...

Hi huffman!

What is meant by not Windows or Windows 7 specific is the software is not written by Microsoft or on Windows code.

Many Open Source programs are written to run on Windows. In this case, GParted runs off of the CD which, because it is bootable and a "live" CD, the CD becomes the OS allowing the programs to run on any computer that will boot to the CD.

GParted is able to work with many file systems including Windows NTFS and fat32, as well as many used in Linux.

So yes, you can use GParted to manage your XP hard drive partitions.

Robert

huffman said:

This I did from Win XP because I don't have a burner setup right now on the Win 7 machine.

I must have done something wrong. I downloaded systemrescuecd-x86-1.2.3.iso. I then burned the disc image file using Roxio. As far as I can see, it is not boot disc. Any clues ???

Thanks

Click to expand...

huffman;

I have a copy of Roxio 8 and have wasted many CDs I thought were going to be bootable. They just don't make it easy, as easy as Windows 7 does.

With Roxio 8, you must select to "Burn the Image" like here:





I hope you can find something similar in your copy of Roxio.

Robert

This is what ImgBurn lives for.

The Official ImgBurn Website

You might as well uninstall Roxio.

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.

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

Click to expand...

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.

Click to expand...

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 :shock:.

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.