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Windows Vista Reinstalling Vista on new C drive

Discussion in 'Legacy Windows' started by engrstan, 2010/01/09.

  1. 2010/01/09
    engrstan

    engrstan Inactive Thread Starter

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    I made the mistake of partitioning my 300 GB Velocity Rapture C drive into 3 partitions. The smallest one, 60 GB, is the C drive where I have the OS. Well, there is only 16 GB of free space left on it and I have red lined it a couple of times. I really need to do something about it but it needs to be as painless as possible, money is not an issue on this one.

    I am thinking the easiest thing to do is buy a new 300 GB Rapture drive and start all over loading the OS and software; safe guarding the original drive in case I need to revert back for some reason.

    Other important considerations:

    I have two other 500 GB hard drives in this computer with software loaded on them as well.

    1. Will I have to uninstall and then reinstall literally all software regardless of which drive it is installed on if I reinstall the OS as described above?

    2. Are there any other painful experiences I may suffer by doing this swap?

    3. Any brilliant or better or other recommendations?

    Thanks!
     
    engrstan,
    #1
  2. 2010/01/09
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Go into Disk Management and use the function first seen in Vista to Extend the partition. Right click on your C:\ drive in Disk Management and select Extend Volume.

    In answer to your other questions ....

    1. Yes - when software is installed on C:\ or on any drive other than C:\ many files are installed deep inside Windows and registry entries point the software executable to the location of those files. Reinstall the OS - reinstall the software regardless of where the software was originally installed.

    2. You're bound to get some hiccups along the way :)

    3. See above.
     
    PeteC,
    #2


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  4. 2010/01/09
    engrstan

    engrstan Inactive Thread Starter

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    Pete....thanks for the response. I just tried to Expand the C drive but it was not available, only Shrink was available. So, I shrank the other two partitions thinking that would free up some space for the C drive but it did not.

    Is there anything else I could try that you can think of?

    Thanks again!
     
    engrstan,
    #3
  5. 2010/01/09
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Thinking back on that I expanded my Win 7 drive recently and discovered that issue - it's obvious really - that there must be free space after the C:\ partition for it to expand into - space at the end of the next partition is of no use. I overcame the problem by deleting all the other partitions on the drive, expanding the C:\ partition and then recreated the partitions I had deleted - slightly smaller of course and repopulated them from my backups of the original partitions.

    The other way of doing it is to use third party software such as Acronis Disk Director or Partition Magic (I did not have acces to those for Win 7) which shuffle the partition boundaries and the data along the drive to free up space for expansion of the first partition..
     
    PeteC,
    #4
  6. 2010/01/09
    engrstan

    engrstan Inactive Thread Starter

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    Yes, that makes perfect since, I was coming around to that idea as well only I didn't think of the repopulation part....THANKS!
     
    engrstan,
    #5
  7. 2010/01/10
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Good Luck :)
     
    PeteC,
    #6
  8. 2010/01/10
    engrstan

    engrstan Inactive Thread Starter

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    Pete,

    I owe you a big one! I was able to Expand the C drive partition by Deleting the adjacent partition.

    All is well with my PC, I will be able to do so much more with it now thanks to you.

    Thanks!
     
    engrstan,
    #7
  9. 2010/01/10
    PeteC

    PeteC SuperGeek Staff

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    Glad to help out :)

    PLease mark this thread as Resolved .....
     
    PeteC,
    #8

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