Resolved Moving/Resizing Primary (C) Partition

Hi,

I am not sure if this is the best place for this post, but I have been trying to resolve this issue for 3 days now and have had no success.

The situation is as follows: I originally had a Windows XP partition (C) and a Data partition (E) on my hard disk. I then installed Windows 7 which then became my primary partition (C) and my XP partition became (D). I was dual booting for a while and then decided that I was ready to completely switch over to Windows 7 and deleted my XP partition. The result was the following:

--25 GB Unallocated Space--Primary C (Windows) partition--Primary (E) Data Partition

I would like to use the 25GB of unallocated space to make my Windows 7 partition bigger, but it seems that because the unallocated space is "before" my Windows partition, I cannot "move" that space to one of the other partitions.

Does anyone know if this can a) be done and b) be done without a third party partitioning tool like Partition Magic?

Thanks.

 

Unfortunately, you’ve hit the limitations of Shrink/Extend. You will be able to use a third-party product to consume the space.

The Shrink and Extend rules are:

1. When you Shrink a partition, contiguous, unallocated space appears to the right of the shrunken partition in the Disk Management graphical layout. Also, it can only decrease the partition size down to the first unmovable/locked system file. Running a defragmentation may move some of the "˜unmovable’ files. Also, if you’re running System Restore, you could try temporarily turning it off, do the Shrink and turn it back on.

After shrinking a partition, the unallocated space can be added (Extended) to an existing partition or set up as a new partition, formatted and given a meaningful name to aid its recognition.

2. In an Extend operation, you are only able to Extend a partition using contiguous, unallocated space that appears immediately to its right (adjoining), otherwise the option is greyed out. However, by moving the unallocated space from partition to partition, any standard partition can be extended.

 

Try gparted.

But as Pete said above - entirely at your own risk.

 

Gparted did the trick. I did have to boot from my Win 7 DVD and do a "Repair" following the operation, as well as a couple of reboots and chkdisk operations. But I'm up and running and my partitions are as I want.

Thanks for the help.