Expand C Drive

Wossi · 8 Jan 2011 at 19:39

I'm round my parents house and for some reason they only have about 5gb of free space on the C drive but plenty on the D partition. Is there any way of reducing the space on D and adding it C? I've had a look at the inbuilt windows partition program, but it won't let me touch the C drive.

Or is this a case of having to wipe and start again?

Mr-White · 8 Jan 2011 at 19:43

Windows version ?

MW

Wossi · 8 Jan 2011 at 19:45

Sorry, it's Vista HP 64bit.

Mr-White · 8 Jan 2011 at 19:48

Did you try shrinking the d: and extending c: in the disk management ?

MW

UnworthyBean · 8 Jan 2011 at 20:08

There are some pieces of software that will do it if disk management cant, i use acronis disk director and its never failed me.

Wossi · 8 Jan 2011 at 20:59

Mr-White said:
Did you try shrinking the d: and extending c: in the disk management ?

MW

That was the first thing I tried. It allowed me shrink D but refused to expand C.

Wondering if something like gparted would work?

Memphis · 8 Jan 2011 at 21:00

GParted would do the job just nicely.

I normally use the Parted Magic boot disk, but I'm sure if you knew of GParted, you'll likely have something already

.

zetec452 · 8 Jan 2011 at 21:24

Is there one disk in the system? If so you should be able to expand into unpartitioned space.

manbearpig · 8 Jan 2011 at 21:30

Gparted will do the job, make sure you back up everything first though just in case.

Pho · 8 Jan 2011 at 21:52

It might be easier to delete the D partition (copy your files elsewhere first, obviously), extend the C partition then re-create a new D partition.

EniGmA1981 · 8 Jan 2011 at 22:01

I'm not sure if disk management locks the boot partition so you can't adjust the size... I had problems with that before... Any of the software mentioned here will sort it out though

Semple · 8 Jan 2011 at 22:03

As above disk management may lock the drive that it boots from. Just to protect it.

gsf600y · 9 Jan 2011 at 10:42

http://www.partitionwizard.com/
I've used this many times. Free. Works with my Windows 7 64-bit too.
Will reboot PC to perform work on the C: drive. Also lets you create a bootable CD.
Looks and works just like Partition Magic used to.

freddie64 · 9 Jan 2011 at 12:55

Wossi said:
I'm round my parents house and for some reason they only have about 5gb of free space on the C drive

How big is the C: partition?

Is it full of unessential junk?

EDIT
Just had a look in CMD/diskpart and there is a option to expand a volume, don't know if this will help but it sounds like it may do the job.

EDIT
Sorry, it seems you can't expand C: partition using diskpart.

zetec452 · 9 Jan 2011 at 13:40

Semple said:
As above disk management may lock the drive that it boots from. Just to protect it.

It doesn't do this on W7. I expanded my C / boot drive with no problems last week. Vista could be different, if I had a vista VM i'd try it for you.

Wossi · 9 Jan 2011 at 14:51

freddie64 said:
How big is the C: partition?

Is it full of unessential junk?

EDIT
Just had a look in CMD/diskpart and there is a option to expand a volume, don't know if this will help but it sounds like it may do the job.

EDIT
Sorry, it seems you can't expand C: partition using diskpart.

The C partition is about 50gb and I've deleted as much as I can, everything that is left is needed.

ChrisD. · 9 Jan 2011 at 20:19

You can't use Diskpart on a system drive in Vista, you need to use 3rd party software to extend it.

Mr-White · 9 Jan 2011 at 21:49

With disk management you should be able to expand the C: but I don't think you can shrink it.

MW