Resizing Partitions in Disk Management

  • Thread starter Thread starter admiral_victory
  • Start date Start date
A

admiral_victory

I read somewhere that , if you want to re-size a partition in Disk
Management , you right click on the partition and select "Resize"

When I do this there is no "Resize"

Should there be ? and if there should , how do I arrange for this to
appear ?
 
I read somewhere that , if you want to re-size a partition in Disk
Management , you right click on the partition and select "Resize"

When I do this there is no "Resize"

Should there be ? and if there should , how do I arrange for this to
appear ?
Click to expand...


Unfortunately, no version of Windows before Vista provides any way of
changing the existing partition structure of the drive nondestructively. The
only way to do this is with third-party software. Partition Magic is the
best-known such program, but there are freeware/shareware alternatives. One
such program is BootIt Next Generation. It's shareware, but comes with a
free 30-day trial, so you should be able to do what you want within that 30
days. I haven't used it myself (because I've never needed to use *any* such
program), but it comes highly recommended by several other MVPs here.

Whatever software you use, make sure you have a good backup before
beginning. Although there's no reason to expect a problem, things *can* go
wrong.

There is limited ability in Windows XP to resize a partition *if* there is
unallocated space available (and other restrictions are met). See
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/325590 However since almost nobody has any
unallocated space, that facility is largely useless. What people normally
want to do is not expand a partition into unallocated space, but to make one
partition bigger by taking space from another partition. A third-party
program is required for that.
 
I read somewhere that , if you want to re-size a partition in Disk
Management , you right click on the partition and select "Resize"

When I do this there is no "Resize"

Should there be ? and if there should , how do I arrange for this to
appear ?
Click to expand...

The inference is slightly incorrect. Disk Management does allow one
to re-size a partition, but destructively. Non-destructive re-sizing
a partition, that is the contents are kept intact, requires a third-
party application, e.g., Partition Magic, if there is unused space
on the physical hard drive. As always when working with drives and
files, always make a known, working backup before proceeding.
 
The inference is slightly incorrect. Disk Management does allow one
to re-size a partition, but destructively.
Click to expand...

Kinda like curing a cold by blowing ur brains out :)

Just my 2¢ worth. Larry

Any advice is my attempt to contribute more than I have received but I can only assure you that it works on my PC. GOOD LUCK.
 
Hi admiral_victory,

WINXP's Disk Management does not support non-destructive resizing of
partitions. You would need to use a third-party tool in order to resize the
partitions without first deleting them......a couple of examples are:

BootItNG:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html

Partition Magic:
http://www.symantec.com/home_homeoffice/products/overview.jsp?pcid=sp&pvid=pm80
Click to expand...

Thanks to all who replied . I'm familiar with BootItNG and Partition
Magic , and have used and recommend both - the support with BootITNG
is particularly efficient and friendly.

I was merely wondering about Disk Management.
 
You're welcome :-)

There was no way of knowing from your original post that you had any
familiarity with third party partitioning tools.



Regards,
 
This is slightly "off-subject" but still regards Partition Magic. Can anyone
tell me with assurance that PM 8 is fully compatible with SATA drives running
under XP Pro? I've gotten as far as creating/adding two new partitions to
a brand new SATA drive and after clicking on "APPLY" get a message that says
"There is no active partion. Would you like to continue?" I'm leery of
doing so unless I understand what might happen if I continue..
 
Back
Top