Repartitioning drives in Vista Premium

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I just recieved my computer, and having no prior experience with Vista, I
discovered that there was already a D drive in place on my computer as part
of the Recovery system.

I have a large amount of files that I will be migrating to this system from
my old one which require me to have them installed on the D and E drives. I
have looked through some tutorials on how to add partitions, and was unable
to either expand the D drive that is present or add an E drive to the system.

I would assume that I need to shrink the size of the C drive first in order
to free up space to create new drives. But my question is whether or not the
recovery system itself needs to remain on the D drive in order to function
properly. Or can this be moved to a seperate smaller drive with the 10 gigs
allocated for it?

Thanks for any assistance.
 
I would like to know also. I am using a Gateway and already upgraded to
Vista. But there is still a partition with the old recover files and such on
it. How do i get rid of it and give the space to Vista?
 
Save yourself a lot of headaches and leave that recovery partition alone.
If it was me I would just go out and buy another HD .............
peter
 
Unfortunately that won't help my problem.
I have a second hard drive. The problem is that with the files and programs
I need to import to this computer, I need access to the D drive where the
recovery partition is. Had I known that there was such a partition before I
ordered a computer with Vista preinstalled, I would have gone elsewhere.

This is bringing me to a point where I amy have to go back to XP just to be
able to use my computer for what it was intended.
 
You can always contact the computer manufacturer and ask them.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
I've tried that.
Their support people told me to use the disc and reinstall Vista, but gave
me no actual support. Upon doing that, I now have a C, D and E drive on which
E is the new install of Vista, C is the old install with all of the actual
working files, and D is still the recovery drive.
Beyond that they have told me nothing except that they don't support
partitioning.
 
Read up on using the "diskpart" utility that is on the Vista disk. I had the
same problem and it let me delete the recovery partition. You can even do it
after Vista is installed. Be very careful though.
 
I just recieved my computer, and having no prior experience with Vista, I
discovered that there was already a D drive in place on my computer as part
of the Recovery system.

I have a large amount of files that I will be migrating to this system from
my old one which require me to have them installed on the D and E drives. I
have looked through some tutorials on how to add partitions, and was unable
to either expand the D drive that is present or add an E drive to the system.

I would assume that I need to shrink the size of the C drive first in order
to free up space to create new drives. But my question is whether or not the
recovery system itself needs to remain on the D drive in order to function
properly. Or can this be moved to a seperate smaller drive with the 10 gigs
allocated for it?

Thanks for any assistance.
Click to expand...

This actually is a simple everyday problem. You need a Partition tool.
If you attempt to fiddle with partitions directly with build-in
Windows tools you lose what's on the partition, a crude throw back to
DOS days. There is a better way that's been around for a long time
that several vendors have offered. My current favorite is Partition
Commander, version 10. It is similar to Partition Magic which is the
most popular tool in this category.

It DOES work with Vista, however you'll need to disable the annoying
new "security" features first otherwise Windows will fuss endlessly
over permissions and nag you don't have administrative rights. This
can be turned off (under User Account settings) then turned back on
again.

With Partition Commander and similar applications you can add or
remove partitions, change drive letters, recover unallocated disk
space without losing any data and do what you seem to want, change the
size of partititons on a single drive.

It depends mostly on how much free space you have on the PHYSICAL hard
drive. For an example assume you have a single 100 GB drive currently
divided into two partions C and E where C is 50% full and E is 25%
full. To make E gain more free (empty) space to store your files or
applications you need to take some free space from C and give it to E.
This is a two step process. Begin by taking some of your C drive's
free space. It is a simple matter of telling the application the size
you want the new C drive to be. In this example you woudl shrink its
size. That initially becomes unallocated space not assigned to
anything on your hard drive.

Next you decide how you want to reassign that unallocated space. You
can either put it in front of or behind a current partition. In this
case you would want to put the unallocated space behind C since you're
making that drive smaller. You get a graphic representation so the
actual doing is simpler then talking about it. Next you go to your E
drive and take the unallocated space you swiped from C that's now
unallocated space and just give it to C. You're presented with a image
of how your new configuration will look.

You then are asked if or not you want to apply the changes. If you say
yes, the application normally will say a drive is in use especailly if
you're working on your root drive. That's normal.

Depending on application there is some warning screen telling you it
needs to reboot. You'll see a new none graphical screen or two as the
application does its magic. How long it take depends on how much your
changing, speed of your system, etc.. It can take a hour or more, it
usually is much faster. Best to defrag the drive first. That's about
it. You can add or delete partitions in a similar fashion again
without losing your data, change drive letter give the volume a new
name, etc..

As with any hardware intensive operation you should of course be sure
you have good backup FIRST in case something unforseen happens. That's
rare, but Murphy's law applies. DO NOT touch the keyboard or attempt
to use the computer for anything (you shouldn't be able to) until it
gets finished. It is normal for it to look at it is hung up and may
appear to be doing nothing for up to several minutes. Again, don't
bail out or you really can screw things up beyond recovery.
 
Thanks very much!
I'll definately have to look into this one.

I've managed to get the three drives seperated, but it still will not allow
me to add space to the D drive so that I can use it, though my E drive is now
accessable and has usable space. From the looks of it, I will most certainly
have to install hte second hard drive in order to get the drive names I need
simply because I'm sure that the Recovery drive itself needs to remain intact.

The only thing that I'd really like to see answered is "Must this remain as
the D drive? If it's moved, will the recovery system still function?" If not,
then it's basically the same as my old system, and the reason I need the D
drive now on this one.

I certainly don't want to completely screw up my OS by moving the recovery
files to a different location =/
 
Thanks very much!
I'll definately have to look into this one.

I've managed to get the three drives seperated, but it still will not allow
me to add space to the D drive so that I can use it, though my E drive is now
accessable and has usable space. From the looks of it, I will most certainly
have to install hte second hard drive in order to get the drive names I need
simply because I'm sure that the Recovery drive itself needs to remain intact.

The only thing that I'd really like to see answered is "Must this remain as
the D drive?
Click to expand...

Since I haven't done it, I don't know for sure. I would suspect the
worse that would happen would be intially it would look in the old
place and say it couldn't find it. Hopefully it would give you a
option for you to tell it where to look in its new location. Its
Windows... who knows if its smart enough to do that.

This is another issue that comes up all the time if you move files
around a lot and I sure do that. Example my primary video editor
Sony's Vegas is smart enough to not only say it can't find file "X",
if I moved it somewhere else, it pops up a window and gives you
multiple choices:

1. ignore the missing file, and just loads the rest.
2. let Vegas look for it system wide automatically
3. you tell it where the file has been moved to and it does the rest

A cute feature is if you move one file and it finds it, it also is
smart enough to "see" other files you moved (if to the same new place)
and ask if you want to now point there for those files to, regardles
if one more or a hundred more.

Don't we all wish Windows was that smart.
 
Start > Help > type in " Disk Management " without the quotes.

What you can do depends upon what you did. Read up in Help on expanding,
deleting & formatting until you find the arrow to Computer Management > click >
OK UAC > then Disk Management is under Storage in the left window > click.

Right clicking on drives will give you a range of options. Since you have no
support from the OEM on Disk Management, regard yourself as self-supported.
That means study and know what you intend and how to do it before doing it.
 
The program I'm working with will do that as well, but I think it would be
far easier if I could move windows and redirect that later as opposed to
having to do so for 5 years worth of saved files.

I know of quite a few programs that have such features actually...would be
very nice if Windows could implement something like that =/
 
Thanks very much!
I'll definately have to look into this one.

I've managed to get the three drives seperated, but it still will not allow
me to add space to the D drive so that I can use it, though my E drive is now
accessable and has usable space. From the looks of it, I will most certainly
have to install hte second hard drive in order to get the drive names I need
simply because I'm sure that the Recovery drive itself needs to remain intact.

The only thing that I'd really like to see answered is "Must this remain as
the D drive? If it's moved, will the recovery system still function?" If not,
then it's basically the same as my old system, and the reason I need the D
drive now on this one.
Click to expand...

Run Disk Management in Vista, and remove the drive letter from the
recovery partition. Then you can assign D to another partition. This
way the data in the recovery partition is left untouched.
 
Thank you.

But will this affect the ability to use the recovery partition at a later
time?

If I change the drive letter, will Windows still be able to access that
partition? Or will it be unable to use it because the drive has changed?
 
Thank you.

But will this affect the ability to use the recovery partition at a later
time?
Click to expand...

I don't have any hands-on experience with recovery partitions, but I
assume that you have to access the recovery partition only when
Windows no longer boots. This means that access to the recovery
partition is done via the BIOS, which means that any Windows drive
letter assigned to the recovery partition is of no consequence.
If I change the drive letter, will Windows still be able to access that
partition? Or will it be unable to use it because the drive has changed?
Click to expand...

A partition with no drive letter can't be accessed by Windows
explorer. If you want access to the partition, just assign a drive
letter (does not have to be D) to the partition.
 
I have a second drive with 3 partions and needed to reallocate space from the
third to the first using the disc management.

Shrunk the 3rd and the extended the 1st and it worked OK until I rebooted
and no second hard drive:-(

Disc management now shows it is as a Dynamic disc and Foreign and nothing on
the right hand side.

How do I recover from this tragedy please....?
 
peter said:
I have a second drive with 3 partions and needed to reallocate space from the
third to the first using the disc management.

Shrunk the 3rd and the extended the 1st and it worked OK until I rebooted
and no second hard drive:-(

Disc management now shows it is as a Dynamic disc and Foreign and nothing on
the right hand side.

How do I recover from this tragedy please....?
Click to expand...

The first step is: don't panic. The information is all still there on
the disk, so don't do anything irreversible.

I've read in these newsgroups that converting a dynamic disk back into a
basic disk will destroy your data -- that's just hearsay, but I advise
caution until you hear otherwise from an expert.

IIUC the difference between a basic disk and a dynamic disk is the
partition table. In your shoes, I would try the Recover Partitions
feature of Acronis Disk Director 10, just to see what it says. The
idea is to create a new partition table from searching the contents
of the disk itself. (Acronis lets you try DD for 30 days for free.)

Vista probably has the ability to revert to a basic disk, but I can't
do anything more than guess because I've never had the problem. I'd
say you should start reading the Vista Help pages on dynamic disks to
learn as much as possible about the topic before doing anything else.
 
Back
Top