Dave said:
Hi Paul,
I tried IMAGE SHACK to post a view of my disk config.
it's here:
http://imageshack.us/f/851/diskmgr.gif/
if i want to keep "program files" on the same drive, I have extra space in
"E:" ... but how to resize those partitions without risking losing all the
data in both?
thanks,
Stardot
Yikes
+------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
| C: 11.8GB | D: 50.3GB E: 50.3GB | No unallocated
| Primary | Logical Logical | space left
| (NTFS) | (NTFS) NTFS+Pagefile |
+------------------------+-------------------------------------------+
+----------------------------+---------------------------------------+
| F: 48.8GB | G: 62.9GB | No unallocated
| Primary | Primary | space left
| NTFS+Pagefile | (NTFS) |
+----------------------------+---------------------------------------+
To make space for C:, something has to be done about the logical section. In your
primary partition table, I expect there would be two entries. One for C: and
one for the logical section. The logical section can be subdivided into lots
of logical partitions (which is how you go about beating the limitation of four primary
partitions in sector 0 MBR). So you'll need a tool (partition manager) that can
handle a logical storage section, resize it or break it as required.
Your second drive uses two of the four available primary slots. The situation on
the second drive isn't quite as complicated.
Before you go any further, go into the System control panel (Advanced,Performance_Setting)
and remove the Pagefile from E:. That's to avoid complications later. In fact, for
the time being, it might be wise to put at least a small page file on C:
and dispense with the others. 300-500MB would do for the time being.
Write down the details of how you had it set up, and you can adjust
it again later. If you leave the one on E:, there may be complaints
if you try to delete or merge the E: partition. A reboot should be a part
of making this change. That will keep any partition tools happy.
Generally, if a partition tool needs to change C:, it must shut down Windows
to make that possible. At least, my copy of Partition Magic does it that way.
C: is "busy" while Windows is running, and I don't know if VSS (volume shadow
service) makes it possible to mess around with C: while the OS is running or not.
I didn't record your free space in the above diagram, but you don't have enough
free space to allow "bouncing" stuff around. If there had been enough room on the
second drive, you might have moved D and E temporarily to the second disk.
I see two possibilities.
1) You purchase a third (backup drive), big enough to hold the contents of D and E.
You move D: and E: off the first drive, then you have room to resize C: and create
a smaller D and E if you want. If there is no distinction between the content types
of D: and E: (i.e. nothing special about them, just data dumps), then you might
consider squashing them together as a single D:.
2) You find a fancy partition management tool.
a) Convert the two logicals to primaries, without sector movement
I don't know if the slack space between the logical and the first
primary, makes that possible or not.
b) merge D: and E: together into a new larger D:. I consider merging to be
dangerous, as a class of movement. Personally, I trust the user to
make note of the setup, better than an automated tool. Mistakes could be
made.
c) shrink the D: partition, which will free up some space at the end (on the right).
d) move D: to the right, leaving a space in the center between C: and D:
e) expand C: into the new freed-up space
The second option requires something commercial. There is at least one
free partition management tool. There is the Linux GParted disc, which
is a boot CD that "looks" like a partition editor when it starts up, and
it is capable of doing a few things. (When I tested it, I didn't get a
very warm feeling, due to the erroneous progress messages it was
displaying. I *hate* seeing a message posted in the progress window,
that has nothing to do with the requested operation sequence. Like
imagine if you saw "making lunch now" in the progress window, while
this was an only copy of your data, you'd have a lump in your throat.
I don't know how the tool really works, but the messages didn't impress me.
It was claiming to do things, that shouldn't have been necessary.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disk_partitioning_software
I have a copy of Partition Magic that I use for some things, but
I also like to bounce partitions to a scratch disk, to clean up
a mess. Sometimes, that takes less time than a whole string of
"manipulations" with a partition manager. A partition manager
isn't "smart" and won't compress together operations that you or I
can see could be combined in some way. The partition manager uses
methodical steps (baby steps), which may take more time than
the "best" possible solution.
Now, the thing is, you shouldn't do (2), without backing up the disk.
Why ? Because the sequence of five things I suggested there is risky.
It's a long sequence, and something could go wrong along the way.
So if you're a person conservative in approach to computing problems, a third
disk is necessary in either case. (1) would be preferred, because creating
the backup of D: and E: is part of the procedure. So to fix the first
drive, you need about 76GB of space to store the contents of those drives.
I'd select a drive bigger than 80GB to do that, to leave some room for
formatting and math (my conversion errors). I'd probably grab a 120GB
from my junk room for this job, although anything bigger is also a
candidate. When I grab the scratch drive for the backup, I run
HDTune and check the SMART tab, for "Current Pending Sector",
as a significant count there, means my junk drive isn't ready for
a job like this. In other words, check the SMART statistics first,
to make sure the drive is worthy.
If you want to copy the contents of one partition to another, there is
Robocopy. It has version XP026 of Robocopy in it.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2006.11.utilityspotlight.aspx
Using the MSDOS (command prompt) window, I use a command like this, to
mirror one partition to another. In this example, K: would be empty before
I started. When finished, all the files from D: will be copied to K: and
all permissions preserved. I'd make sure K: was big enough to hold the
46.3GB that is currently on D:. And, I'd make sure K: was NTFS, to match
the source type. NTFS preserves permissions, so using NTFS for temporary
storage would preserve those permissions.
robocopy D:\ K:\ /mir /copy:datso /dcopy:t /r:3 /w:2 /zb /np /tee /v /log:d_to_k.log
That command is *very dangerous*. Since the method I chose is "mirror", if
you specify the wrong partition as the target (K
, it'll *erase* K:
effectively. I made a copy/paste error once with the above command, and
before I could stop execution, I'd lost a gigabyte of data (overwritten
and not recoverable). Now, I leave a copy of Notepad open, and "test paste"
the command into there, to confirm what is in the clipboard, is what
I intended :-(
In any case, I don't see a 100% safe way, to make the changes, without
buying a disk. If you want to take a chance, and use a partition manager
to make the changes (procedure (2) or something similar), then if anything
goes wrong, I warned you.
*******
In summary, shrink D and E, so that a bit more space is freed up for C:.
Then expand C: into that space. Most of the free space will be coming from
E:. but the fact you're using a logical, just makes this more complicated.
The partitioning tool must be able to handle a logical, in order to make
the sequence of movements sane. The logical is going to need to move to
the right, whether it is done that way, or D and E are converted to primary
and then moved one by one.
I believe the Windows built-in Diskpart command, can handle partition
expansion. I think I saw a command for that. So if you just "bounced"
D and E to a third drive, you could expand C: with Diskpart. And then
re-create D and/or E and move the data back from the third disk. Making
sure there is enough room for it all.
Have fun,
Paul
