Increase a partition size in Vista

  • Thread starter Thread starter Avinash
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A

Avinash

Hi

I have Vista Home Premium.
I have a 320G hard drive that has four partitions and I am running out of
space on the C: drive . Can I combine one of my empty drives with the C:
drive?

Thanks

Avinash
 
Avinash said:
I have Vista Home Premium.
I have a 320G hard drive that has four partitions and I am running out of
space on the C: drive . Can I combine one of my empty drives with the
C: drive?
Click to expand...

Yes, but you need a third party tool like Acronis or Paragon. Vista's Disk
manager is not able to perform the operations you want.

Tip: If you are familiar with Linux, you can download and burn a Live-CD for
free. Use the included partitioning tool, like gparted. PartedMagic, which
hardly requires any Linux knowledge at all, is a distribution made
specifically for partitioning.

http://partedmagic.com/

And remember: Back up before you attempt to make any drive alterations!

Charlie42
 
Avinash said:
Hi

I have Vista Home Premium.
I have a 320G hard drive that has four partitions and I am running out of
space on the C: drive . Can I combine one of my empty drives with the C:
drive?

Thanks

Avinash
Click to expand...
Third party software. Better yet might be to redirect your documents folder
to one of the other partitions.
For directions, go to Window Help and Support, search for "redirect a folder
to a new location" (without the quotes).
 
Hi

I have Vista Home Premium.
I have a 320G hard drive that has four partitions and I am running out of
space on the C: drive . Can I combine one of my empty drives with the C:
drive?

Thanks

Avinash
Click to expand...
If the empty drive/partition follows "C:" partition,
you can delete it and enlarge C partition toward free disk space
directly in Vista in disk management tool.

I recommend you doing it as admin in safe mode, even if not required.
I got access denied msg when doing it in normal mode.
 
Hi, Avinash.

That sounds like a job for...Disk Management!

There are several ways to start DM. My favorite is to press the Start
button, type in diskmgmt.msc, and press Enter.

One of the new commands in the Vista version of DM is "Extend volume". If
there is unpartitioned space immediately following Drive C:, then you can
extend Drive C: to use all or part of that space. If that space is
occupied, you will need to reorganize its contents so that you can delete
that partition. Perhaps you can backup all the files that you want to keep,
or move them to one of the other partitions, at least temporarily.

When the second partition is empty (or holds nothing that you need to keep),
just right-click on the partition and choose Delete volume. Disk Management
should then show that area as Free Space. Then right-click on Drive C: and
choose Extend volume. Follow the wizard's steps and note that it asks for
the amount of space in MEGAbytes, not GB. So if you want to extend Drive C:
by 10 GB, tell it 10,000. (Voice of experience. When drives and partitions
were much smaller, I wanted to extend by 3 GB so I told it 3; since 3 MB was
too small to be valid, the wizard used the default, which is ALL the
available space. Instead of 3 GB, my drive was extended by the full 8 GB
before the next partition.)

For an example with made-up numbers, assume:
Drive C: - Vista - 20 GB
Drive D: - Data - 100 GB, of which only 50 GB is used
Drive E: - Photos - 100 GB, with 80 GB unused
Drive F: - Emails - 100 GB, with 20 GB unused

You could move the 50 GB from D: to E:, then delete D:. This would give you
100 GB of contiguous free space immediately following C:. Then extend C: by
10,000 MB (10 GB) to make it a 30 GB volume, leaving 90 GB of free space
between C: and E:. Create a new Drive D: in that 90 GB space. Move the 50
GB of D:'s former contents from E: back to the new D:. All done!

Of course, this won't work if you can't free up the space immediately after
Drive C:. But IF the numbers fit, you need no software except what is in
Vista, and the whole project should take less than an hour. If you post
more details about the size and contents of each partition, maybe we can
help you work out a plan.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1)
 
Hi RC,

The details for each partition - C: - 20GB - 4GB free - Vista
D: - 100GB - 54GB free -Data
E: - 100GB - 80GB free - Data
F: - 100GB - 81 free - Data

Can you help in the best way to backup the contains D: in to the F: drive.

Thanks

Avinash
 
Hi, Avinash.

Good! Since you still have plenty of free space on Drives E: and F:, the
process I suggested in my example should work well. ;<)

First, before starting Disk Management, make sure Drive D:'s 46 GB of
contents is preserved. (If some of it is unimportant to you, then you can
save time by deleting it in advance; no sense in moving it back and forth if
you don't need or want it anymore.) You can use any copy or move program at
your disposal, including good old Windows Explorer. Move to either Drive E:
or Drive F:, since both have plenty of free space. Create a new folder with
a name like "DBak" so that you don't mix D:'s files with those already on
the destination drive. If you use Copy, rather than Move, the original
files will remain on Drive D:, but only until you delete that partition, of
course.

Also, decide HOW MUCH space you want to add to Drive C:. Vista tends to
GROW on us! We can partially control it by putting applications and some
other files on other drives, but it continues to grow. Mine started at 20
GB; it has grown to 60 GB and has less than 10 GB free now. :>( For this
post, I'll assume that you want to grow yours by another 20 GB to make it 40
GB total.

Then, using Disk Management:

Step 1: Delete Drive D:.

Step 2: Right-click on Drive C: and choose Extend volume. In the wizard,
specify how much space to add to Drive C:. The "Select Disks" page can be
slightly confusing (to me, at least). It should show nothing under
"Available" (unless you have a second HD you haven't mentioned). Under
Selected, you should see "Disk 0 - 100000 MB". (All these numbers are
approximate, but it should represent ABOUT 100 GB.) On the lines below, you
should see the current size of Drive C: (20000 MB) and the max available for
expansion (100000 MB) the size of the former Drive D. The bottom line will
probably show something like 100001 MB, 1 MB more than actually available; I
suppose this is to keep us from blindly accepting the default, which should
produce an error. To extend your Drive C: to 40 GB from its present 20 GB,
type "20000" into that bottom box and press Next. The actual extension
process is surprisingly quick, probably less than 1 minute.

Step 3: Recreate Drive D: by right-clicking on the 80 GB Free Space
following Drive C:, choose New simple volume and follow the wizard to create
a new 80 GB partition, format it NTFS and name it Drive D:.

Step 4: Exit Disk Management and Move all your 46 GB of files from DBak on
Drive E: or F: to the Root of the new Drive D:.

All done!

Please let us know how this works out for you.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Windows Live Mail 2008 in Vista Ultimate x64 SP1)
 
Hi RC

I've moved the data from the D: drive to the F: drive. In Disk Management I
deleted the D: drive. I am able to see the free space between the C: and E:
drives (100GB). But when I right click on the C: drive, the Extend Volume is
disabled (I cannot choose it).

In the Disk Management Help it says "You can extend a volume only if it does
not have a file system or if it is formatted using the NTFS file system."

Can u help

Thank

Avinash
 
And since you are running Vista the C: drive is obviously formatted with
NTFS. A head-scratcher. Does the former D: drive region show as
unallocated in Drive Management?
 
Hi, R.C., I was reading carrefully your guideline and I understand it clearly. But I have one issue to solve: following your procedure step by step I stucked in moment, when I made a space on drive D and using Disk management I deleted drive D. After that when I right-click on Drive C I`m not able to chooose Extend volume option, because its still gray.

Seems like empty volume doesn`t come next to Drive C, or what may be the problem?

Thanks for your opinion in advance!

Tibor.
 
Hi,

Run diskmgmt.msc and report back with the location of the free space in
relation to the current C: volume. The free space must reside immediately
after the end of the C: volume in order to expand it. If it is in front, or
separated by another volume, then you will need to use a third party tool to
manipulate (slide) the volumes around before you can expand it.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

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