Extending my Windows 7 Partition

[DarkDavil]

Okay Lets see how i can do this I have Vista Home Prem. x64 on my C: drive. That was my original OS. I shrank(shrunk?) that by 40 GB. My Windows 7 Ultimate x64 is now on my 40 GB partition X:. I now wanna give my X: drive more space from my C: drive. I have 37.2 GB free on my C: drive. How can i give 20 of those 37.2 free GB into my X: drive(Which is my Windows 7 one)
Thansk ^^

 

[iseeuu]

Okay Lets see how i can do this I have Vista Home Prem. x64 on my C: drive. That was my original OS. I shrank(shrunk?) that by 40 GB. My Windows 7 Ultimate x64 is now on my 40 GB partition X:. I now wanna give my X: drive more space from my C: drive. I have 37.2 GB free on my C: drive. How can i give 20 of those 37.2 free GB into my X: drive(Which is my Windows 7 one)
Thansk ^^

Click on the "Start Button" and type: Disk Management - ENTER. Right click on the partition you want to modify ie: Shrink C: Extend X:

Robert

 

[mickey megabyte]

it may take a long time though, particularly if the partitions are badly defragmented - defrag them first.

(although i have often wondered whether it's worth defragging before doing this sort of thing - it seems a good idea, the partitions will be resized faster if defragged, but as it takes a long time to defrag in the first place....how much time (if any) do you gain?)

(sorry if i'm rambling, it's 1.42 am and i've had most of a bottle of red )

 

[Night Hawk]

You'll run right into problems attempting to shrink the Vista primary any further especially if booted in the Vista installation when trying to start off. First you may run into the lack of memory error when booting into the Vista installation later simply from possibly not having enough free drive space if you should add anything further as far as programs, files.

The second would be the obvious recommendation to back everything up from the drive since the resizing if that should go bad will effect the entire drive. If you manage to shrink the Vista C primary while booted in 7 to use the Disk Management tool there you will still need to move the 7 primary forward afterwards where that will not only take some time but usually need the use of a 3rd party drive tool to start with.

While the 17+gb should still leave enough drive space for Vista a 3rd party tool for seeing this done would allow one operation to follow the other instead of booting into one to do something with the other. If you need a free drive tool for this GParted live for cd can shrink the Vista primary, move the 7 primary forward to fill in the then empty drive space(gap between primaries), and later expand the 7 primary to fill in the space it was moved back from at the rear of the drive.

GParted information and instructions,
GPARTED DOCUMENTATION - GENERALITIES

Latest release in iso disk image form,
Browse GParted Files on SourceForge.net

Some additional screenshots can be looked over at GParted -- Screenshots

For multibooting on multiple drives and resizing, moving partitions GParted has been quite reliable here.

 

[DarkDavil]

Hmmmm. Im not sure about using that Gparted stuff. But I will resort to that if worst comes to worst Here are the(my) facts.
1. My C: drive and also my X: drive are fully defragged, courtesy of Auslogics
2. WHen i went in to shrink my C: drive, it would only let me shrink my C: drive (Size of 37.2 GB) by 9113 MB so thats only like.. 8.899 or 8.9 GB. (1024 MB = 1 GB yea? )
3. Now i have created a new partition. How can i expand my X: drive into that space of 8.9 GB? Help would all be appreciated :0
But anyway, rep for you all ^^



massive

 

[Night Hawk]

GParted works without Windows being loaded and won't run into any unmovable system file problems if you are trying to shrink the Vista primary while booted in Vista. Once you have worked with it a few times you won't be going back to the disk management except for taking some screenshots. That's the difference seen there.

For what you are trying to see done there you will likely end up needing a 3rd party drive partitioning program. When first running the 7 beta builds you can see how the hard drives here looked where XP and Vista were still seen in a "quadruple boot" setup at the time.

From there once the RCs first became available XP was the first to go followed by Vista when installed on a virtual machine. That was followed by the present when focusing on custom setups seeing the 32bit RC on another virual machine with the eventual two main 64bit installations and one temp to be removed to restore Vista there.

That amounted to quite a bit of repartitioning and even resizing the former XP/Vista dual boot to allow for the 32bit and 64bit beta builds initially.

 

[iseeuu]

Hmmmm. Im not sure about using that Gparted stuff. But I will resort to that if worst comes to worst Here are the(my) facts.
1. My C: drive and also my X: drive are fully defragged, courtesy of Auslogics
2. WHen i went in to shrink my C: drive, it would only let me shrink my C: drive (Size of 37.2 GB) by 9113 MB so thats only like.. 8.899 or 8.9 GB. (1024 MB = 1 GB yea? )
3. Now i have created a new partition. How can i expand my X: drive into that space of 8.9 GB? Help would all be appreciated :0
But anyway, rep for you all ^^



massive

Yes, when you use the Windows 7 Disk Management utility to shrink a partition, it will not allow you to shrink it too much and cause problems. It only allowed you to shrink C: by less than 10GB. When you did that, you did not create a new partition, you created empty space, or unallocated space. Now, right click on the X: partition and "Extend" it and it will absorb the empty space you just created.

You are doing good!

Robert

 

[DarkDavil]

Well... It wont let me extend my X: drive, Only will let me extend my C: drive.. I'll show screen's. Im on my Vista when taking this I dont kno how to take the screen shot of me right-clicking my X: drive, using the sniping tool. Maybe this lil' issue will show it?


See how my C: drive says System Boot and Pagefile.. etc. etc.
my X: Drive says none of that, it only says Healthy Partition. Any Idea wuts up?

 

[Night Hawk]

That's because once you shrink the Vista primary down you have to "move" the 7 primary towards the front of the drive in order to first fill in that space. Once that is done you now see vacant drive space at the back end of the drive you fill in by expanding the 7 primary at that time.

To simplify things here when having to shrink the former XP primary down a bit while still running the 32bit beta on the second primary initially created for that the same thing had to be done in order to grow the 7 beta primary into the empty space seen once the primary was moved forward on the drive. And that's what takes the real time moving partitions!

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all

I'd attempt this another way.

1)
Use Acronis True Image to backup your partitions (don't forget that sometimes there's a small "hidden" system one as well).

2) create the bootable acronis backup media so you can boot from a CD / DVD / USB stick.

3) run the restore from the CD.

In this you can delete existing partitions when you restore and can change sizes.

NOTE - if you have the small hidden partition this must be restored as type ACTIVE whilst the others are PRIMARY.

If there isn't a "hidden" partition then your Windows partition should be set to ACTIVE.

It's all quite easy in the Acronis restore program.

Whilst the program is not free its a good robust backup and recovery program -- and you should be taking backups shouldn't you anyway.

A typical 30 GB W7 partition on reasonable hardware only takes around 15 mins to backup / restore so it doesn't take a lot of time.


Cheers
jimbo

 

[Night Hawk]

Macrium's Reflect and a new one called ToDo are both seeing free system imaging programs for that purpose.

If there's nothing on the 7 installation quite yet an even faster method of seeing 7 use up the remaining drive space since the Vista primary has been reduced would be simply nuking the 7 primary rather then moving it for a new where a fresh install of 7 would go on that much faster.

Some here report a clean install of 7 in as little as 12 minutes while the average is right around 20. Now compare that to the time required to move the 7 primary forward and expand it afterwards or the 39-45 minutes typical of an XP or Vista fresh install. New primary to replace first for 7 only no need to move or resize simply created in the total empty space.

As far as imaging the drive you would want to do something like that once you have both Vista and 7 the way you want to see them and in top working order first. Then you would have the optimum backup image created at that time. A general data backup for anything you want to prevent from being lost would be the first step in case you run into any big problem where either Windows won't run.

 

[Dave76]

Well... It wont let me extend my X: drive, Only will let me extend my C: drive.. I'll show screen's. Im on my Vista when taking this I dont kno how to take the screen shot of me right-clicking my X: drive, using the sniping tool. Maybe this lil' issue will show it?
View attachment 23959

See how my C: drive says System Boot and Pagefile.. etc. etc.
my X: Drive says none of that, it only says Healthy Partition. Any Idea wuts up?

The currently booted OS will show that it is the "System Boot and Pagefile.. etc. etc.", thats Vista now, when you boot into win7 it will then show it's drive as "System Boot and Pagefile.. etc. etc.". Win7 will call itself drive C: also. At least it does on mine.

This has no effect as to where the partition is physically on Disk0. That will not change.

Actually haven't tried this on Win7, but previous windows including Vista, Disk management will not 'extend' a partition to the left, only to the right. This is why X: won't go to the left. As far as I could tell, MS disk management is restricted due to anti-trust suits.

Try Partition Wizard Home Edition from this site:

FREE Great Programs for Window 7

Works on 32 and 64 bit and Win7. I used it to move my OS partitions and it worked flawlessly.
Be sure to backup everything first. Acronis is the best, but several 'free' programs work very well, DiscWizard from Seagate (if you have a seagate HD and is a limited functionality version of Acronis), Macrium reflect, Paragon is said to be good also.

Download some of the help and how to info from the Partition Wizard home page. It will explain everything.
It's quite easy to run. You can select the moves you want to do, see what they will look like, then close all open programs except Partition Wizard, and then click "Apply" and it will shut down your OS and preform the changes and restart your OS, complete them and it's done.

Good luck,
Dave

 

[iseeuu]

Well... It wont let me extend my X: drive, Only will let me extend my C: drive.. I'll show screen's. Im on my Vista when taking this I dont kno how to take the screen shot of me right-clicking my X: drive, using the sniping tool. Maybe this lil' issue will show it?
View attachment 23959

See how my C: drive says System Boot and Pagefile.. etc. etc.
my X: Drive says none of that, it only says Healthy Partition. Any Idea wuts up?

OK wow ... Everybody is right! (can everybody be right? hehehe )

Dave is right in that the Windows 7 Disk Management utility will not extend a partition to the left ... Douh!!

Night Hawk is right in that the simplest way to proceed from here is to use GParted to finish this the way you want it.

Jimbo is right in that it is always a good idea to back everything up.

Here is what I suggest you do. Go to this web site and download "System Rescue CD". It is an ISO or when you burn it to a CD (do a burn image to disc in Windows 7) the CD will boot. While you are doing that, I will make some screen shots so you can use GParted to extend your X: partition.

System Rescue CD is a "Live" CD in that it will run from the CD and not install anything to the hard drive. GParted is one of the programs on the CD so you can easily finish extending the X: partition.

Robert

 

[iseeuu]

Well... It wont let me extend my X: drive, Only will let me extend my C: drive.. I'll show screen's. Im on my Vista when taking this I dont kno how to take the screen shot of me right-clicking my X: drive, using the sniping tool.

While I'm waiting for the screenshots to cure, here is a quick easy way to make a picture (worth 1000 words!) and include in posts:

Have what you want to show visible on your screen. TYPE: Ctrl (hold) then press: Prt Scr. Now open "Paint" (every Windows has it) and "Paste". Find paste in the menu or just TYPE: Ctrl (hold) then press: v

You have just captured the image on your screen, placed it on the "Clipboard", and pasted it into "Paint". Now you can "Select" and "Crop" small areas, add arrows, circles, and text or what ever?

You can add the screenshot as an attachment directly to the post by clicking the "Attachment Paper Clip" in the tool bar above: Then browse for the screenshot and up load. Finally click the "Attachment Paper Clip" again and select the screenshot you just uploaded and you are done!

Or, you can create an album and upload your pictures there and reuse them as needed:

Just make sure your pics are less than 600 X600

Robert

 

[iseeuu]

Night Hawk is right in that the simplest way to proceed from here is to use GParted to finish this the way you want it.

Please follow this link for instructions on using GParted to resize this partition:

http://www.sevenforums.com/software/22723-hard-drive-partitions-changing-gparted.html#post245403

Robert

 

[DarkDavil]

Okay, Im jusst about to do the GParted thing, but do i absolutly have to use the erm.. SystemRescueCD thing? I mean worst case scenario.. i have to re-format my laptop, but honestly i wouldnt mind it that much as i have already backed all my important data files etc.

EDIT: More rep for you all XD

 

[iseeuu]

Okay, Im jusst about to do the GParted thing, but do i absolutly have to use the erm.. SystemRescueCD thing? I mean worst case scenario.. i have to re-format my laptop, but honestly i wouldnt mind it that much as i have already backed all my important data files etc.

EDIT: More rep for you all XD

Well ... no one can make that decision for you. But if you are already prepared to reformat and reinstall everything (all day project?) it seems to me that you have nothing to loose (maybe an hour?) and might enjoy the learning experience for the next time? I made pictures of every step and it is all windows type gui. If you can shrink in Vista and 7 you should have no trouble extending with this software?

Its up to you.

Robert

 

[DarkDavil]

Yay!! I did it Thanks for all of your help everyone. Time to giv ya'll some rep Thanks a bunch everyone...
SOLVED!!

 

[iseeuu]

Yay!! I did it Thanks for all of your help everyone. Time to giv ya'll some rep Thanks a bunch everyone...
SOLVED!!

Excellent work! Nice job. Now you have some experience you can pass on to someone else, huh?

Robert

 

[DarkDavil]

Hah yea Once again Thank You all