Resizing hard drive(s).

[G-CPTN]

My Toshiba W7 laptop has a 500GB hard drive partitioned into equal segments.

The C drive has only 46GB free whilst the D drive only has the recovery files and has 224GB free.

I used to use Partition Magic several machine and Windows versions ago.

Will the inbuilt W7 Disk Management utility allow me to change the partition sizes without deleting existing data?

I see that I can shrink the D volume, but will this then be available to expand the C volume, or will the location of the files on the D partition prevent me from 'moving the boundary'?

Is there any risk with this?

[Milo Minderbinder]

to answer your three questions......yes, yes and yes
in theory...

in practice shrinking a partition often shrinks it from the "wrong end" so you end up with unused space at the top end of the drive, not the bottom.....meaning you can't expand into it

personally I prefer to use a dedicated Linux tool called GPartEd, which is far more flexible

There are a couple of specialist distros which have this
GPartEd Live GParted -- Live CD/USB/PXE/HD
PartEd magic start

You tend to find that some PCs will only boot one or the other.
A tip is when they ask for the graphics type, try the VESA option

And yes there is a risk. Make sure your partitions have been scanned with chkdsk before starting, that you're free of virii, and get rid of any unwanted temp files and empty the recovery bin.

[Bushfiva]

Since you've used (and presumably like) Partition Magic, check out Easeus Partition Master which is free and almost identical in use.

You can resize using Windows 7 own tools, but I don't think you can move a partition to create space in front of it. It can also quite slow.

[ExGrunt]

Hi G-CPTN,

I was going to suggest a linux based approach, but see Milo has done so already, so I second his approach.

The advantage of a live USB approach is that the drive being re-sized is not the OS drive, so if something goes wrong you still have a working system.

It goes without saying back up vital files before messing with disk partitions.

EG

[mixture]

Unless you've got a death wish (or at least a series of good backups) don't mess with the C: drive.

[Milo Minderbinder]

Only issue I've ever had in doing this is where the drive had corruption on it and the resize then failed. You can then end up in a situation where the partition table shows an expanded drive, but windows still only shows the original drive size.
I've fixed it every time by shrinking and re-expanding again.
However if I'd chkdsked the drive first the problem would have been avoided. Lesson learnt....

I've never trashed a drive doing it, but I guess theres always a first time.....Mixtures concerns about backups are very valid

[le Pingouin]

Likewise, I've resized assorted drives on numerous occasions and not lost one. I'd put it in the category of chances are small it'll go wrong but catastrophic if it does. You have back-ups anyway don't you?