Solved Extending C drive into space currently allocated to D

[Tongwa]

Greetings;
I have a 500GB HDD currently partitioned into 2 (C: and D: )drives.

I want to do something pretty common, which is extend a nearly full C drive (from the current 50GB to 100GB) and shrink the remaining partition (D drive) by the same amount.

I tried using Disk Management and shrunk D by 50GB but when I went to extend C it couldn't because the free space wasn't directly to the right of the C drive (though it was technically to the right of the drive which pissed me off a little because all these threads are saying you can do it if the free space is to the right of the drive and that's not entirely accurate. It must be space immediatly to the right of the drive you want to extend (not to the right but separated by another logical partition).
Since the whole purpose in having the D drive in the first place was to hold the kids large game files, there are approx 75GB of games on it.

Here's my sitch:
I want to use Disk management to do this; not some other 3rd party software.
I have another separate HDD (E: ) with 250GB of free space on it.

Can I just move the contents of the D drive onto the E drive temporarily; delete the D partition; extend the C part.; then rename the remainding space to D, move everything back in and expect the kids games to work as they had before? Or will the registry get screwed up?

If you are an IT pro and you think there's a better way to do this, by all means.. I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance for your help

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Here's my sitch:
I want to use Disk management to do this; not some other 3rd party software.
I have another separate HDD (E: ) with 250GB of free space on it.

Can I just move the contents of the D drive onto the E drive temporarily; delete the D partition; extend the C part.; then rename the remainding space to D, move everything back in and expect the kids games to work as they had before? Or will the registry get screwed up?

If you are an IT pro and you think there's a better way to do this, by all means.. I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance for your help

There is an easier way to do it.

But you have rejected it with your first condition stated above.

 

[derekimo]

Why not try this out, http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/93322-partition-wizard-use-bootable-cd.html

Since it's a bootable CD you don't have to install anything and it is highly recommended over the built-in disk management's limited capability.

 

[Tongwa]

Used Partition wizard bootable CD

Firstly, thanks to the techs who responded.

I used the PW minitool even tho I hadn't wanted to for several reasons (my CPU sometimes crashes from faulty memory reads and I didn't want to be effing around with my partitions and all the kids saved game data if the move was going to take awhile .. which it did) but I tried it anyway and was crying the whole time like this:
WAAAAAHHHHH!
But it worked.

Next question, I have the unalloted partition next to the C drive now (8MB) and then the other partition/logical drive (which is actually E and not D... ) does it matter? Should I reboot to the CD and switch the E drive bak to it's former place or leave it?

Thanks in advance.

 

[bigmck]

Try using the PW bootable CD again and move the partition to where you want. == Just for reference on your future posts, possibly a little more "professional wording" could be used. Thanks,

 

[gregrocker]

You should be using the Partition Wizard bootable CD which is the only tool besides Disk Mgmt which will not fail with total data loss during resizing.

You have used PW to resize D from the left to create space to extend C?

You should be able to do the rest in Disk Mgmt. If the space you create is Logical "Free Space" click on it to Delete Volume first so it becomes Unallocated Space, then follow these steps to Extend Partition or Volume.

If any problems please post back a screenshot of your maximized Disk Mgmt ddrive map and listings.

 

[Tongwa]

Thanks again to all.. The Partition Wizard Bootable CD did the trick and I'm good to go. Once the free space was immediately to the right of the C volume, I was able to just click on it and increase it's volume to the max available.

 

[derekimo]

Glad to hear it, Thanks for posting back with your results.