How to delete/extend partition

[dougham]

I have 4 partitions on my notebook.
C: is Win7 32-bit
D: is Vista 32-bit
E: is Win7 64-bit
F: is Data.

I now want to get rid of the Vista partition and give its sectors to the Win7 64-bit.

I tried shrinking the Vista partiton, but the extend option is greyed out for WIn7 64-bit.

How do I remove Vista and have it deleted from the boot manager setup?
Then how do I extend the Win7 64-bit into the, now empty, Vista partition?

 

[Lee]

Hi dougham, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Go to the Tutorials section of the forum; there might be sometime there that can help you with your problem. Also you might take a look at programs like Partition Magic, or some other partitioning program to help you with your situation. Also be careful not to erase you MBR. Good Luck.

 

[torrentg]

I can help you if you post a screenshot of disk management. It's quite easy to do but I need to know which is your system partition with boot files. If D: is system, we need to move the boot files to another location first. Simple also.

Also, are you booting to the different operating systems with a boot choice screen or by changing bios default boot device?

 

[patio]

What backup strategy do you have in place ? ?
Re-sizing partitions does not always go as planned...

 

[Tews]

Brink has an excellent tutorial on this -=> here

 

[TheSchaft]

As Lee and Tews said, there are some good tutorilas on this:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2670-partition-volume-extend.html

and

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2674-partition-volume-create-new.html

And, as Patio said, make SURE you have backed up any data you want on ALL the partitons. I did a "simple" resize on an XP machine and lost the XP partition. Of course, since it was such a simple operation, I hadn't backed up the XP stuff. Not a fun day.

 

[TheSchaft]

I can help you if you post a screenshot of disk management. It's quite easy to do but I need to know which is your system partition with boot files. If D: is system, we need to move the boot files to another location first. Simple also.

Also, are you booting to the different operating systems with a boot choice screen or by changing bios default boot device?

I agree - if the original poster can give us a screenshot of the disk layout now we can help move the boot records. If the boot record is on the Vista partition, Disk Management won't allow it to be deleted, or much of anything.

 

[dougham]

Layout is as I wrote in initial post. C then D then E then F.

I shrank D then used partition wizard, as suggested by responder, to extend E back into the space released.
I now want to delete the Vista partition, D:.
I don't know how to tell bootmgr that D: has gone. Obviously the drive letters may change too.

VistaBootPro shows Entry 1 - Win 7 on C, Entry 2 - Win 7 64-bit on E:, Entry 3
- Vista on D:.
Is there a way to boot into Vista and tell it to remove itself, so that it edits bcd correctly?

As for backup ALL my data is on F:, is backed up manually every day, but also has a scheduled task that backs up at 2am. Backup is to an external disk. I have tested backup completely by doing a full restore when I changed 250GB drive to 500GB.

 

[torrentg]

Please post the screenshot so we are sure of your setup. As I said, if Vista partition contains boot files, we will have to throw some commands at Windows. And you will have to set a different partition as active.

 

[dougham]

Scrren shot

Sorry for the delay.
Here is the Disk Managment screen shot.
C = Win 7
D = Vista
E = Win7 64-bit
F = Data.

I'd like to delete the Vista partition (D and remove it from the startup boot.
I would also like to keep the drives as C, E and F, as all my links to my data on F: are built into C: and E:. However I can fix that manually myself.

Regards

Doug

 

[SIW2]

You will only be able to extend C into adjacent Unallocated space.

To do that, type msconfig in start search - open it - under the boot Tab, highlight Vista entry and delete.

Delete Vista D partition - extend C.

 

[dougham]

I don't want to extend C: I just want to delete/remove D: and make sure that the bootmgr knows it has gone.

 

[torrentg]

Bootmgr and your partition D: are not worried about each other.

Safe to format or delete D right now if you wish.