Transfer or Resize Windows Partition?

the_syco

Hello all.

When I started my build I decided to limit the Windows XP partition to 20GB's, so that it'd be big enough for Windows, but small enough that I wouldn't be tempted to put stuff on it, when space got rare.

Fast forward a few years, and there's only about 3GB's free.

As it's part of a 250GB HDD I'm wondering should I do?

Resize the other partition down 20 or so GB's, and add it to the current Windows pertition?

Or option two is resize another partition, create a 40GB or so partition, and somehow copy the existing files to the new partition. I'd prefer to do this, in case sh|t happens, I can still use the original Windows partition. If I were to do this, I assume Windows wouldn't care that it's going to a larger partition, and also, what tool should I use to do this copying? Prefer to do an "out of Windows" copy, to ensure it all copies, and that the registry also gets copied.

What are you thoughts on this? My aim is to transfer the Windows partition from 20GB's to 40GB's or 50GB's.

PogMoThoin

Use gparted (its on any linux distro cd like Ubuntu also) to resize the C:/ partion to 40GB. It will move the next partion (probably E:/ as / is prob your dvd drive) to the right to make space. I've done it before, this is the safest way of doing it IMO. Make sure You run ccleaner and defrag before You start. Xp will run a checkdisk on first boot as it will see changes, you can defer this but its best to let it run.

Doing it this way You don't touch Your Windows partion only add more space to the right. You'll see what I mean when You see how gparted lays it out in front of You, the first partion starts to the left.

the_syco

Cheers. D is the windows drive, and F is the rest of the partition. Will try this later. I think I used gparted on some sort of live distro CD. Will look for that.

PogMoThoin

You'll have to shrink F:/ by making some space to the left, then resize / to use this free space. You can set both jobs and then apply them. Its pretty easy.

the_syco

Cool. Ran ccleaner. Know of any good tools to run a defrag with. Was going to use OO PartitionManager2, but I got an error saying "This software requires a 32 bit version of NT 5.0 or higher" when I try to install it. Which is a pity, as I've found OO to be a good company.

Any recommendations of a good defragger?

/edit
Was using the 32bit installer instead of the 64bit installer. Got the 30 day demo.

NullZer0

the_syco wrote: »

Cool. Ran ccleaner. Know of any good tools to run a defrag with. Was going to use OO PartitionManager2, but I got an error saying "This software requires a 32 bit version of NT 5.0 or higher" when I try to install it. Which is a pity, as I've found OO to be a good company.

Any recommendations of a good defragger?

/edit
Was using the 32bit installer instead of the 64bit installer. Got the 30 day demo.

From the makers of CCleaner
http://www.defraggler.com/

the_syco

Ended up using the "OO Defrag". Did a nice job of it, reducinf fragmentation from 40% to 7% on the D drive, and 37% to 27% on the F drive.

Gpart is scanning the PC now (I'm on another PC), so it should be finished soon.

The Gpart I'm running is a small (I'd say less than 10MB) ISO that I found a while back. Runs off the CD, and the GUI is pretty much just the Gpart application. Automatically finds all the HDD's, video card, etc. Will give a link to it if I find where I got it.

Capt'n Midnight

Before you shrink partition do a full clean up , empty temp folders dumps and stuff with ccleaner
use spacemonger to ID blot you can remove

use pagedfrg to defragment registry , if the page file is really fragmented you can set it to Zero size and then turn it on after the resize, it might not be a bad idea to turn off hibernation too

in linux you can delete pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys

oh yeah you are running defrag not to defrag the files but to have them all put at the start of the drive to make resizing easier,

the last thing you want is to wait 20 minutes while it moves a temporary swap file a little to the left

the_syco

The good: did a "space" defrag, which put all the files to one side.

The bad: when resizing the drive with gpart, I had to change the size one or twice to get the size right. Then I clicked "go". Checked something came back, but to my horror I realised that I forgot to delete the first two jobs, and to only leave the "correct" job. Meaning it did the other two jobs, and now is doing the final job that'll take 20 hours... instead of just doing the one job in 10 hours

Bo||ox. Well, I'll know next time.

What I've yet to do: somehow add the non-allocated space that I've created to the "D" Windows drive. I'm guessing I'll have to move the "F" drive to the right, and then expand the "D" drive that's on the left...

Capt'n Midnight

20 hours !
are you moving the start of the partition , in which case you may need to fix the boot sector when you are done

the_syco

20 hours... became not 20 hours. Dunno. It's booting now. Let it do the consistency check, and it's now "Inserting an index entry into index $0 of file 25" on the "F" Games drive. Google results say to let chkdsk do it's thing, so I'll let it do that.

Attached are two screen-shots I took with my phone, when I was running Gpart. The exclamation icon looks bad, but meh.

Now, and here the bit I'm dreading: how do I add the non-allocated space (grey area to the right) to the Windows partition?

Capt'n Midnight

you should be able to expand the partition into it with gparted again

the_syco

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

you should be able to expand the partition into it with gparted again

Ehhhhhh...... uhhhhhhhhhhh....

I've tried expanding it, but no luck. I'll look up the tutorial from lasttime I did this. It's recovering orphaned files now

the_syco

Right, so far, so good. Gonna now extend the D drive.

=-=

Using "GParted-liveCD 0.3.4-8". It's a freeware application

GParted LiveCD is a business card-size live CD distribution with a single purpose - to provide tools for partitioning hard disks in an intuitive, graphical environment. The distribution uses X.Org, the light-weight Fluxbox window manager, and the latest 2.6 Linux kernel. GParted LiveCD runs on most x86 machines with a Pentium II or better.

The added benefit of it is you don't need to know anything about linux commands, etc, and does an excellent job (thus far).

=-=

Getting errors when I try to move the "F" partition to the right, so I'm getting the newer version of Gparted LiveCD from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

the_syco

the_syco wrote: »

Getting errors when I try to move the "F" partition to the right, so I'm getting the newer version of Gparted LiveCD from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

Still getting errors Dang. Can't seem to move it over, like in http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/resize/resizing.htm

the_syco

So, as I couldn't enlarge the D drive (gpart doesn't allow me to move the F drive over so that I can do so), I ghosted the D drive to the 40GB drive, called it the B drive, added an option in bios.ini and it worked nicely.

It booted up okay, and loaded Windows off the B drive with no issues. It runs a bit slow, so I'd say it'll need a defrag, which I'll do over the weekend.

The next thing I'll try to do is to change the D drive letter to... something that's not D. L maybe, or something, and then change the B drive letter to D, so that everything runs off it okay. Not quite sure how I'll do that yet, but I hope there's a way.

Will keep you informed.

Rambo

This is Free for a while:
EASEUS Partition Master Professional Edition 3.5
should do what you want

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/easeus-partition-manager-pro-35/

kaimera

hmm...I was trying to do this myself today only to find windows wont let me extend my primary OS partition.

must try this gpart tomorrow perhaps