How To: Repartition Your Hard Drive For Free Without Formatting or Losing Data
Posted 08/21/08 at 12:00:00 PM by Justin Kerr
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6. Resize Your Partition
At this point we assume you have studied step 4 and understand the limitations of working with an active drive and can clearly define where you will take the space from, and what you will do with it. To resize your partition simply double click on the appropriate partition and manipulate the various options.
Free Space Preceding – Take sectors from the beginning of the partition which can be attached to any partition directly to the left of it, or formatted into its own volume.
New Size – Space remaining on the partition once all other fields are manipulated. You can enter a number in here if you know exactly how much space you wish to have remaining.
Free Space Following – Take sectors from the end of the partition which can be attached to any partition directly to the right of it, or formatted into it’s own volume.
Create As: - This is only seen if you are creating a new partition using unallocated space. Select Primary Partition if you plan on having fewer than 4 partitions on this particular drive, or if you plan on installing an operating system on it.
Filesystem: - If you’re a Windows user you’ll likely want to choose NTFS. If the drive will be used for Linux instead choose either EX2 or EX3. If you pick the wrong one don’t panic you can always format it with a different file system later on.
Lets assume I want to delete the third partition /dev/sda3 (OS Shared) and add these sectors to /dev/sda2 (Windows Vista). Highlight the partition and click the delete icon at the top. The screen shots below shows the transition.
/dev/sda3 (OS Shared) is now represented as grey unallocated space that can be added to /dev/sda2 or broken into multiple additional partitions. From here I double click the /dev/sda2 partition and increase the size to use up the unallocated space.
/dev/sda2 (Windows Vista) size has now increased from 68.35 GB to 109.74 GB.
Once you are satisfied with the changes click apply (Circled Above) and kick back while GParted moves your data out of harm’s way and resizes the partitions to the new configuration. Note that absolutely nothing happens until you click apply. If you cancel out using the X in the top right, the changes are abandoned and you are back where you started. Additionally, make sure you pay your hydro bill in advance and use a UPS if possible. A power outage during this procedure can cause all sorts of problems that you may, or may not be able to fix without starting over and reinstalling Windows. We hope you took our earlier advice and made a backup!
7. Repair Operating System Partitions That Will Not Boot (Hopefully Optional)
It is very common for Windows to report a problem on boot up after resizing the partition it is installed on. In most cases it will run a check disk and inform you all is well. But what if you OS won’t boot at all? This happens most often when you remove sectors from the front of your bootable partition. Common errors are typically related to boot.ini. The quickest, and easiest way to solve this problem is to pop in your Windows CD and follow the repair this computer option. During my testing, we weren’t able to cause any boot issues that the Windows repair tool couldn’t solve.
Tracking
Submitted by PhoneyVirus on Fri, 09/04/2009 - 6:54pm
I have a copy of this, every Poweruser should have a copy in his/her toolbox.
Here's a heads up to anyone
Submitted by MdX MaxX on Mon, 08/31/2009 - 2:57pm
Here's a heads up to anyone doing this. The article says GParted requires 30min for each 100GB of Hard Drive space repartitioned. I don't know where this estimate came from, because when I did this, GParted broke a 100GB chunk off my Drive and made it a new partition in less than 20 seconds. It was just as fast when I merged that chunk back with the main partition.
Submitted by Zoandar on Thu, 07/23/2009 - 10:36pm
I downloaded the version 4.3 Parted magic ISO, and used first Nero 8 and later Alcohol 120 to make discs of the software. However, the Sony notebook I am rebuilding won't boot from either of them. I can boot from other bootable CDs, like Drive Image, but not from these new Parted Magic discs. Did I miss something? What has to be done to make them bootable?
Hmmmm... I'm confused.
Submitted by yogurt80 on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 8:00am
Hmmmm... I'm confused. I used parted majic yesterday, it took all day. I have a 500 GB HD, and with 2 partitions- a 30GB for my OS, and a 470 for music and thngs. I wanted to move 20 GB from the large partiion to my OS partition. I moved 20 GB from the begining of the 2nd partition, but how do I add itto the first partition? now ha 20GB of fre space set between ttwo partins, but I don't know what to do wth it.
Submitted by alakazahm on Mon, 04/27/2009 - 10:12am
I followed the exact guidance here and it appeared to have worked perfectly, however, when I use Disk Manager in Vista to check the new partition layout: Old: 500 GB drive, three partitions, 25, 50, 325 (where Vista was using 22 of the 25 GB of the OS partition hence the need to act to increase the OS partition size), New: 50,50,295, appears perfect, right?! Maybe wrong:
When using Windows Explorer, the C: drive still shows 2.74 GB free of 25 (vice what should be 27.7 GB free). Any ideas anyone?! I need to install SP1 and don't want to act until Windows Disk Manager and Windows Explorer agree..arrgghh!
Submitted by DavidWitteried on Sun, 01/04/2009 - 1:43pm
I tried the ISO image verstion of Parted Magic but it will not see my RAID 0 array. How can I make it work with my RAID array? I am using the motherboard controller on a ASUS Striker II Formula motherboard.
David Witteried
Submitted by Christian Hart on Mon, 09/29/2008 - 1:52am
Another reason this article is so timely: while Partition Magic is still a breeze to use, last time I checked, it isn't supported in Vista. Because Symantec remains a graveyard where old, good software is purchased and then allowed to die, I'm not hopeful they'll update it.<sigh> I'm still using XP but the days seem to be numbered for at least 2 software products I've depended on for years.
Remember to back up your
Submitted by webgrunt on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 3:20pm
Remember to back up your data before doing this, in case a power outage or sudden hardware issue occurs when the partition is being changed.
Submitted by Psychotech on Tue, 08/26/2008 - 7:24pm
I,ve been using Partition Logic for a couple of years now. It looks very similar. It is also free.
Submitted by watuzi on Sun, 08/24/2008 - 7:39am
Thanks Justin, I'm gonna try this on my junk pc as an experiment. Can you do a howto on cloning your OS hard drive into a bigger, newer hard drive? My current pc is getting full and I don't want to do the reformat/reinstall thingy. It's too much of a hassle.
Submitted by frankstanley on Fri, 08/22/2008 - 4:03am
Worked perfectly, I never even knew this was possible before!
Submitted by mikepa on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 9:01am
This a great find ....
I agree that an article on keeping data in a seperate partition on Vista would be usefull. Moving My Docs to D: was easy with XP, but is nigh impossible to do perfectly in Vista (way to go MS!).
Before Partition Majic, there was....
Submitted by Talcum X on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 6:22am
FIPS partition splitter( yes, that's redundent). it was shareware, but it was also pre win95. I dont kow if it has evelved to include Fat32 or NTFS or just faded off into obscurity. But it worked just the same. Slick DOS based util. that I had in my arsinal for years.
***********
Every morning is the dawn of a new error.
Submitted by Pixelated on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 6:15am
I agree that this is a great alternative and well done tutorial.
Speaking of Partition Magic, that's all PowerQuest's IP that Nortoin aquired when they bought them out. Don't be fooled Norton makes terrible products and when they run through the rest of PowerQuest's ideas it's back to making garbage products.
Great article, Justin!
Submitted by Marcus_Soperus on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 4:15am
This is an outstanding tutorial, and especially so because it doesn't shy away from the "here's what do if things go wrong" aspect.
I used to be a big Partition Magic fan, but found myself frustrated that the program wouldn't support the biggest hard disks on the market. Do you know if Parted Magic can work with the current crop of 500GB-1TB (and climbing) drives?
I'd also like to see a follow-up discussion of how to use a second partition for data storage in Windows XP and Vista. I've been using one partition for Windows/apps and a second one for data for many years, but I suspect that some readers might not know how to do it.
--------------------------------------------------------
It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
Thanks
Submitted by Justin.Kerr on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 3:24pm
And yes it works great with larger drives. Biggest I have tested it with is a 750 GB but i'm sure 1TB wouldn't be a problem.
I agree it was a great
Submitted by PhynaeusClaw on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 7:21am
I agree it was a great article. Here's one question though. (Either for Marc or Justin)
Other than organizational preferences, what is the point of partitioning a single hard drive into an OS partition and a data partition? (Assuming you are only running one OS.)
Submitted by PhynaeusClaw on Fri, 08/22/2008 - 4:04am
Thanks for the comments. I see the light now.
Submitted by Marcus_Soperus on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 8:01pm
I've seen my share of hard disk disasters over the years, including disk crashes, corrupted file systems, and I even restored a disk image to the wrong logical drive one time. By keeping my data on a separate drive, not only am I free to fiddle around with the system drive, my data is also safe from disasters.
It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
Submitted by Justin.Kerr on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 3:23pm
Yeah, if you have large files you change often (photoshop or video editing) it's good to contain that to a seperate partition to avoid fragmenting your primary windows volume. It also allows you to format and wipe out your OS but since you keep all your document, music, etc on a seperate drive it's easy to reinstall.
it makes OS defrags and
Submitted by sirphunkee on Thu, 08/21/2008 - 8:03am
it makes OS defrags and reinstalls much much easier and quicker
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