System partition
 

I've just rebuilt a dud laptop with Win 7 ultimate & it's ticking along nicely. However, at the build, I divided the 160gb drive into a 20gb system partition & left myself with a D drive with just under 140gb. It's dawned on me that I probably haven't made the system partition big enough for the os & apps etc. in fact it's pretty full now with windows, anti virus & office installed plus a few other productivity apps.

Is there a recommended way of extending the system partition short of rebuilding the thing?

It's quite easy if you have access to any one of a variety of programs which do partition management. Partition Magic was one which served well up to recent times, when it seems to get upset if there are linux partitions on the drive.

More recently I have used the Paragon programs which seem to work very well also. There are probably freebies around which do the same job, but I have been happy to pay for something which will be messin' around with my data.

From what you have said, the procedure would appear to be:
1) Reduce the size of the D partition at the start of that partition by the amount that you need to increase the size of C.
2) Reduce the size of the Extended Partition in front of the D partition that you have just made available by operation (1) to the minimum available.
3) This should leave the required amount of free space at the end of the C partition which you then increase in a third operation to absorb that space, and make it part of the C drive.

Most programs have a graphical interface which makes this much more clear than my written description. It's much easier in practice than it may sound. I do recommend that you do each of the above steps separately, even though most programs allow you to set up the entire job as one procedure.

The last one (resizing C) usually involves the computer rebooting to do this as a DOS operation. I don't think that can be done any more in W7 so I don't know just how this might happen under the new OS. Make sure therefore that whatever program you choose to do this is OK with Windows 7.

It's a relatively simple and safe operation with the right software, and while it's recommended that you backup your data before changing partitions, I have never done so, largely because it was too much hassle up until the appearance of large and relatively inexpensive external HDDs. If you already have data on the machine which you'd rather not lose, it may be a worthwhile precaution.

Good luck,
FOR

Thanks FOR - the great thing is that as a sparkly new build, there's no data to lose! I'll have a look for partition utlilities you mentioned - as you say, I have resized & created partitions through Windows disk management before, but the system partition itself is verboten through window's own utility.

Partition Magic is long gone. Acronis works but is not free. Easeus is a Partition Magic clone and is free. As FOR says, there are many similar tools with varying features and user-friendliness. Easeus is pretty much idiot proof.

I'm not sitting at a suitable machine right now, but I'm sure you can shrink and stretch partitions, including the system partition, in Win 7 via its own Disk Manager.

I'm sitting here on a W7 machine & a quick look in disk management says that it will extend the system partition, but on my laptop, it won't. I'm on an admin account on both machines. Odd???

Do you have space behind the partition for it to expand into?

Not sure what you mean by 'behind'? There is certainly plenty of disk space available in total.

Yes, but isn't that disk space part of drive D? So it's not available, until you shrink and move the partition containing D. Perhaps you should use a tool like Easeus, which will let you drag partition boundaries around, rather than using the Win 7 tool.

It is, but then again it is on this machine too - two simple partitions. Quite happy to do that & report back.:ok:

You have a physical hard drive. On it, you appear* to have two partitions. In each partition, you currently appear to have one logical disk drive: a system drive (C), and a data drive (D).

I think you think the logical drive and the partition it is sitting in, is the same object because the drive exactly fits the space available to it in that partition. Well, it's not, but as a courtesy several third-party tools let you treat them that way on many occasions. You need to re-read FOR's post and compare the number of steps he describes, with the number of steps you think should take place.

Something like Easeus will help you a lot: it will let you arrange your drives and partitions using drag and drop, and mask the number of background operations that entails until you press the "do it" button.

Edit: * by "appear", I mean "in my mind, having read your posts", not "to you, it looks like...but the real situation is different".

With respect, that makes little sense in English, but no matter, the message is received, understood & the problem is sorted. Thanks.

SystemRescueCD - free download from Distrowatch includes both partimage which you can use to make a backup image of your win 7 system partition prior to resizing the partitions and QParted which will do the partion resize bits. I have had no problem enlarging XP system partitions in the past, don't see why there should be any issues with Win 7. The Win 7 image made with partimage can be restored onto a larger partition without problems - it only saves bits actually used and not unused space.

Beyond all the above expert advice, it is good practice to install applications and data in separate partitions instead of C:\Program Files. This helps keeping the size of the system partition under control.

EASEUS free certainly works for me. I've pushed partition boundaries around a fair bit on this machine, using it.

Partition Magic was brilliant, but no longer around. I have an old CD of it but it won't work with Win 7.

Moving stuff with EASEUS can be a slow job. Backing up stuff you don't want to lose is advisable, although I've never lost anything.

In the end Easeus was used to redo it. On reboot, apps failed & couldn't be removed - didn't show up in installed programs. All things considered, I put the disc in & built it a 2nd time, using the install routine to resize the partitions as required.

Thing runs factory fresh, like a dream.

Folks

At risk of being flamed/bombarded/pelted with kanagroo poo. Why do you want to partition? There can be a small performance advantage (but you really need to work at it) and no security/redundancy advantage. Installing onto separate drives makes sense but partitioning for a single OS does not, unless you want to share that partition with different OSes (which I do for example on a Windows Linux dual boot machine).

If it's just so that you can access your data through a different drive letter to make backups easier or whatever, there are simple ways to do that with a single partition.

Unless I'm missing something, just go with a single partition.

I'm just feeding my kangaroo some senna pods.

It means that if you put all your data onto the second partition, you can reformat and re-install the OS without worry about doing the data as well, It can also have some security benefits as well.

LR :E

Pulls on flame proof suit...

Formatting should be a last resort. Installing a new copy of Windows will copy the existing Windows and Program files folders and install a brand spanking new version. The Microsoft migration tools for apps and settings work well and for other apps like Thunderbird, I always set these up to store data in My Documents somewhere rather than under Application Data.

I've done this many times since XP SP2 when it got really stable. I leave the old folders hanging around for a week or two until I know I've got everything then delete them.

With a little work, it's very easy to segment OS, applications and data just as well as using a separate partition.

I still reckon there's no value in partitioning for a single OS and in my experience, causes far more problems than it ever solves. I also reckon that the security angle is a red herring. Can't think of a single security advantage.

My advice would be to not partition but to spend 10 minutes thinking things through then using what is already there to segregate data.

Finally, Windows can do all of the partitioning for you. When you say you are running as admin, are you sure? Or did you just add your account to local admins? They are not the same thing! To partition as admin, type cmd in the search bar, then right click Command Prompt and click Run as Administrator. At the command prompt, run mmc. Add the Disk Management snap-in (File->Add/Remove snapin).

Regardless, good luck with the build.

Cheers

Simon

Simonta,

There is no functional difference between the built-in Administrator account and an account granted administrative rights via membership of the Administrators group.

The only unique feature about the administrator account is that it cannot be deleted. It can be disabled (in XP and above) or renamed, however.

SD