I've been using Partition Magic 8.0 to try to resize a partition on my hard drive.
When I run it and tell it what to do (enlarge the E partition from about 6GB to 12GB at the expense of C - plenty of room on C to do that), it re-boots the computer and starts the process but then gives me "Error 27 Cannot lock Drive", tells me to press any key to re-boot and does exactly the same again when I do. The next time round the message is "Error 793 (I think) Too many errors" and on re-booting for the fourth time the machine starts normally.

I'm running XP. The same process on my laptop (also XP) runs perfectly well with no problems.

Any ideas about what is going on? The drive concerned was fitted as a replacement hard drive a couple of years ago.

GG

RTFM

When you apply changes, PartitionMagic evaluates your system to see if changes are being made to partitions where there are open files (such as when you modify the C: drive while running Windows). If there are no open files, the changes will be applied while Windows is running. If there are open files, PartitionMagic must go into boot mode to apply the changes. When prompted, click OK to go into boot mode. You do not need to have DOS installed on your system to apply changes in boot mode.

SD

Now it is possible to have the E partition physically adjacent to the C partition, but do you have a D partition and where is it physically in relation to the C and E partitions? If D is physically in between C and E, then you cannot resize E at the expense of C since D is in the way.

Also, since C is probably your main OS partition, have you defragged C and ensured that there are no system (unmoveable) files located in the space on C that is going to be lost? I have increased the size of OS partitions in the past, but am very wary of making them smaller - ie full data backup beforehand.

An alternative to Partition Magic is System Rescue CD which is a Linux live distribution which includes QTParted which can resize NTFS partitions on the fly and, since none of the hard drive operating systems is active, they do not create problems such as you have experienced.

I bet that D: is the CD/DVD drive...

SD

Hmm, I'm pretty sure that drive letter mapping shouldn't interfere with partition resizing as assigning drive letters has nothing to do with the physical location of a partition (apart from some basic issues such as having a C: partition to boot from). Also Partition Magic should not let you create impossible tasks (resizing to a smaller size than can hold the data which is already on the disk).

A quick google on 'partition magic error 27' gave me this page, amongst many other suggestions: http://www.mcmcse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?printertopic=1&t=2901&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&vote=viewresult

Personally I'd never trust something as potentially hazardous as a partition-resize to actually run under Windoze itself. Make the rescue discs, and do it from DOS!

Alternatively, download the Gparted partition tools bootable CD. It's like Partition Magic, but free and open source.

Sorry for not replying sooner, I didn't have a chance yesterday to check up on what anyone had suggested.

Quote:
When you apply changes, PartitionMagic evaluates your system to see if changes are being made to partitions where there are open files (such as when you modify the C: drive while running Windows). If there are no open files, the changes will be applied while Windows is running. If there are open files, PartitionMagic must go into boot mode to apply the changes. When prompted, click OK to go into boot mode. You do not need to have DOS installed on your system to apply changes in boot mode.
SD

And that's exactly what I did, clicked OK and PM re-booted the machine (I presume that that is what they mean by boot mode). And on the other machine it worked perfectly, rebooted, and resized the partitions as requested. On this one - no. There's plenty of free space on the C drive, about 50Gb and I only want to move 6Gb. As I say, I've done it before on this drive, under XP, so I can't understand what has changed.

I tried re-starting it in safe mode and realised that I didn't know how to do it, Ctrl or Esc or F8 or whatever it was under Win9X doesn't work anymore.:uhoh:

And yes, the D drive is the DVD (or one of them - don't ask!).

GG

As I said before, resizing partitions which are mounted and active is a very bad idea unless you're using good volume management software (which you don't get with poor quality, low-end operating systems like Windows). Fine, it might have worked for you before, but it's dangerous by default and anyone who fiddles with computers for a living will have a suitable horror story to recant in this regard.

Either create the floppy discs (from the start menu), or use Gparted and do it whilst the partitions are ALL dismounted.