Mike_S said:
Will the BootIT NG work with my existing setup or does it needed to be
loaded before the drives are partitioned (i.e before operating system is
installed)?
Also how do I know if I have a primary and secondary partition or an
extended partition or whatever other type there may be. Does it matter? Will
BootIT walk me through the procedure?
It is not really intuitive, but is not difficult once you try. It has
the big benefit of not needing any operating system around at all - just
its floppy and the machine's BIOS
Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.
Boot the floppy, Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on
Partition work. You will then see a list of partitions. These may be
Primary ones or may be Volumes contained in an Extended partition that
will appear above them in the list.
You work by moving data (in XP) from one partition/volume to another and
then readjusting sizes
For example, to work on two consecutive Primary ones or two consecutive
volumes - first having moved as much as you can from the second (lower)
one to the earlier (upper) one of the pair, highlight the second in
BING, click Resize and shrink it as much as possible. Then click Slide
and set to have no free space after, and you will have space where you
can expand the first one - by Highlight and resize. Then go back to XP
to move more data if needed and repeat until the second one is empty and
can be deleted.
If the partitions are not consecutive, you will have to slide the
intermediate ones so as to have the free space where you want it. And
if the one you are losing is a volume, then when you have all the space
at the top (front) of the extended partition you will have to resize
that to have the space outside.
Tedious, but it is not difficult once you have things booted so you can
see what you are working on
