Windows 7 Partition

Paulyrey

Paulyrey

Paulyrey

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5 Jul 2008
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33
My C drive is running low on space and i would like to increase the size of it. Is it possible to increase a partition size without losing the data on it? Or would i have to re install windows. I have over 40gb of spare space on the secondary partition on the drive, so what i have tried is to shrink the size of the second partition so i could expand the first partition to allow more space, but when i try to do this Expand... is greyed out.

Not sure if im doing this correctly, any would would be greatly appreciated. :D
 
it depends where the secondary partition is located on the disk. it needs to be just after your primary partition to have any effect. the problem with moving space from 1 partition to another is that it shrinks space from the end of the partition, however the primary is on the right.

|primary| |2nd| |free|


there ends up being all your data in the middle, therefore it cannot connect the two together (it doesnt use any random free space on the disk.)

you need to back up the data on the 40gb partition, then delete it, then extend it to the size you want, then copy the data back onto the leftover space.
 
Thanks for the reply. The trouble is the partition im trying to extend is my windows installation partition. Is there a way to copy the windows installation to the new partion i freed from the 2nd partition, and they delete the original?

¦Windows 20gb ¦ Second ¦new 40gb¦

to

¦Empty ¦ Second ¦ Windows 40gb ¦
 
it wouldnt really be the best way like that. - you end up with this in essence:
(it doesnt matter if its windows that you're extending.)

|windows 20gb+20gb| |20gb second|

you backup the non windows partition, delete it, and do what i said in the first post. then you should nt have any problems, unless the windows partition is after the one you want to extend?
 
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Thanks :) i have tried doing what you said and everything went well apart from when i try to format the drive/delete it. It wont let me because its in use. There is nothing on it yet it still has 350mb of space used up. I have turned on show hidden folders and run disk cleanup.

Also i used filemon to find out what was using my drive and it was svchost.exe

Isnt this a windows related process? Why is it using the drive? I cant seem to stop it.

I noticed also that out of the three partitions i have, the new one just says "Healthy (Primary Partition)" whereas the one im trying to format says "Healthy (Primary Partition, Page File)" Is that whats causing the partition to be used?
 
it could be. go to comupter-properties-advanced system settings then click performance, go to the advanced tab, click change, and select no paging file for the hard drive. (make sure one is set for the OS partition though.)

then restart and try again.
if no avail, continue anyway with deleting the partition - needs to be unformatted space to work.
 
Paulyrey
Windows 7 Partition
My C drive is running low on space and i would like to increase the size of it. Is it possible to increase a partition size without losing the data on it? Or would i have to re install windows. I have over 40gb of spare space on the secondary partition on the drive, so what i have tried is to shrink the size of the second partition so i could expand the first partition to allow more space, but when i try to do this Expand... is greyed out.

Not sure if im doing this correctly, any would would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

Have you tried using Gparted from linux. Though it is a linux, it will work on windows. Just download the ISO, and burn it to disc using IMGBURN, then boot off the disc.
 
Yup Use gparted

Although, download Parted Magic it has more tools on it, gparted being one of them
 
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