Repartioning issues

Love my new ASUS 1201PN except for the annoying factory partition.My HDD is partitioned into C: (operating system, I believe) and D: (Data) with hidden partitions after each of these (see screenshot). The frustrating thing for me is that the D: is bigger but all programs and user files are installed and downloads are automatically placed under the C: drive. Of course, if I choose to save pics or music on the D: drive then the libraries (incl. My documents) will not be functioning correctly (Yes, I could change were they look, but any program that goes to search for a file will still be looking in C: - I've already experienced this other frustration).

So the ideal would be to shrink (or eliminate) the D: and increase the C: but I can't due to the hidden partitions. Plus I've heard that even if I figure this out as soon as I change the partition size the F9 recovery will no longer work! So what in gods name do I do to get rid of this stupid factory partition? And is it still possible to use F9? If not (F9), how do I do a recovery (CD?) to USB drive since I don't have a optical drive?

Any help is greatly appreciate...I've been trying to find a solution for 2 days and I've cursed ASUS more times than I can count for this stupid practice.

 

1st have you created the restore DVDs so you can recover if this re-partition fails?

Once you're done you can use commercial (and possibly a few free ones) products to move stuff around. Most partitioning programs will require booting from a CD or USB stick so they can delete the D partition and move those hidden partitions to the beginning or end of the drive. Once the free space made up of space from the now deleted D: drive is directly adjacent to the C: drive you can extend the C: drive into that free space.

Doing this with some programs will require some understanding of partition tables and drive geometry. It is also very easy to mess up the entire drive and have to start over from scratch. That's why it's very important to have those recovery disks.

If you don't mind losing all your work and installed programs you can always press the F9 and restore then entire system but this time tell it to create a single large partition.

Cheers,

 

Thanks for the quick reply, but as I stated...no optical drive, so no restore DVD's can be made. I'm trying to figure out how to do set up a restore file on a USB drive...any tips?

Also, you didn't mention anything about whether F9 would function after changing the partitioning.

I'm looking for some concrete answers here as all I seem to find anywhere are vague notions of how this can be done. Why the hell did Asus have to make this so stupid difficult. I've have a dozen laptops of other brands before and never had to deal with this crap!

 

Use an external USB DVD burner. I keep a few around just in case. Borrow one or buy one.

The only way to know for sure (if F9 will still function once you're done moving partitions) is to try it. I keep a lot of spare drives around so I would just clone the drive and play around with the partitions on the clone. If you don't have spares, all you can do is backup and try. The only way you will get an absolute answer is if you luck upon someone with that exact model who's tried what you have. Check the owners sub-forum for you model. You might get lucky.

Cheers,

 

Thanks again, but no access to external dvd drive, nor am i in the mood to buy one, so i'm just going to have to figure out the usd flash drive option.

On the other hand, the idea of cloning the drive and playing around with the partitions is a great idea...but how do I boot from an external drive?

 

You can't boot windows from USB. You can clone to USB and trust it worked and then mess with the original (not ideal but I understand replacing the HD might impact your warranty) and if something goes wrong clone it back.

Best of luck.

 

Actually you can.

 

Really, how? I've seen a couple of hacked XP implementations on 16GB USB sticks but never a full clone booting from USB. I've used eSATA for booting Win7 but never USB.

Please enlighten us.

Cheers,

 

You can boot off of a hard disk in a USB enclosure. No hacking required.

 

There are literally thousands of threads requesting a complete instructions on how to install Windows onto an external USB drive and have it boot without looking to an internal drive during the boot.

I have yet to find an answer which provides complete working instructions. Even if you get Windows install program to recognise the USB drive as an install point the first reboot either hangs or doesn't find the drive at all.

Even Microsoft clearly states this is not possible/supported
Error message when you try to install Windows Vista: "Windows is unable to find a system volume which meets its criteria for installation"

The important section in the article is this:

This issue occurs because the Windows Vista (article applies to Windows 7 as well) installation must be able to write to the boot volume of the computer, and the boot volume must be non-removable to prevent later removal of the boot device. If the boot device were removed, this would make it impossible for Windows Vista to start. A computer is restarted several times during installation. Because the BIOS reports the USB device as the boot device, and the USB device is removable, Windows Vista Installation cannot continue. This is by design.

The only way I can see around this is to have a bios that supports treating USB drives as fixed non-removeable media so that Windows thinks they are internal, similar to the eSATA functionality.

What specific method did you use and how exactly are you booting windows from an external USB drive?

Cheers,

 

AFAIK you can't install directly onto a USB drive without tons of hax, but I've cloned the internal disk and used usbbootwatch to allow it to boot USB. Take care.

 

Now that looks interesting. I'll have to try it. Thanks.

Cheers,

 

Glad this sparked a lively conversation. I'll look into usbbootwatch...

 

Still seems awfully complicated and infact I don't really want to install Windows 7 on the USB, I want the factory recovery partition there (I think) and to be able to boot it as a safeguard incase I want to return the computer back to day 1 state. This would be the correct way to do this, no....just use the factory recovery partition? thanks again

 

I think he was suggesting cloning the disk to an external drive and making sure you can boot from the copy just in case. And, yes it looks complicated to me too.

Cheers,

 

You can probably use a 3rd party partitioning utility (or a linux live USB with gparted or similar) to move the partitions 1 at a time. Then you could merge the partitions. The recovery partition may be able to do this itself, but I'm not sure since I haven't used it in a VERY long time... so I'm not sure you can do this without a 3rd party utility. You could probably just clone the recovery partition in any event, so that you can restore it to the drive if something wipes it out.

 

Here's someone who did exactly what you want on his G73. Lokks like you can just clone the hidden partition off to another drive for future use.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...h-problems-solutions-here-43.html#post6839769

Cheers,

 

thanks a bunch for keeping up on this Panzer. Thinks I'll give it a try. If not, I'll just go the entire disk cloning method.