Drive partition problem under windows

A bit of background...
-I have a Lenovo x61
-I have backup DVDs for Windows Vista to restore the computer to the factory state

So I wanted to play around with Windows 7 and I also realized that I didn't need the hidden service partition at the beginning of the drive if I had the backup DVDs. So, I figured if I were installing a new OS anyway, it would be a good time to kill that partition.

I proceeded to kill the partition successfully in Vista using diskpart and I was left with approximately 5.5GB of unallocated space at the beginning of the drive. I had read several places that if you did a clean install of Vista with unallocated space, it would overwrite that space and give you access to the whole drive in a single partition. So, I thought that probably was the same way Windows 7 worked as well. I then popped in my Windows 7 DVD and selected clean install. Everything about the install worked great...except I still have the 5.5GB of unallocated space at the beginning of the drive.

Does anyone know how to get rid of this space and merge it back into the main partition? If the solution involves reinstalling Windows 7, that's fine (since I just did it yesterday and have hardly customized anything).

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

Yikes! I hope this is not true, it would be too much invasive, even for M$ standards.

The problem here is that the partition is at the beginning of the disk.
You should literally move the subsequent partition. If you can afford deleting that partition (because you will reinstall Win7 there, o because you have a reliable backup) you will be better off doing so.
Then you will have a large chunk of unused space at the beginning of the disk and you could create a single partition that spans all the space.

Before proceeding doing that I advise you to post a picture of your disk structure as it appears in disk manager, though.

Any yet I would follow a different course: keep that partition, format it to NTFS and use it as a data partition.
You might also use it as a primary partition for a backup OS (Linux can fit very well in 5 GB of space).

 

Here is a screenshot of my disk manager currently:



I'm not quite sure I understood your suggestion on how to fix the problem otherwise. Also, I don't really have any desire to have another OS (like Linux) and I'm not sure why it would be beneficial to leave the partition for data.

 

A separated data partition is always advisable. Because it's the OS partition that usually gets corrupted and because, should you need to reinstall from scratch, you could wipe your OS without worrying about your data.

Now, if you want to put all your eggs in one basket and if you really don't mind wiping the partition I see as SW_Preload (C , all you have to do is to delete this last partition. Disk1 will show you 149 GB of unallocated space.
At that point just create one big partition that encompasses the whole disk. Format it to NTFS and then install Windows.

You might ask: how do I delete the partition with the OS, from within the OS? Good question (you see, a second OS would come in handy, here ).
In the good ol' times of DOS there were boot floppy disks.
These days I'd say: grab a Linux live CD (like Ubuntu, Knoppix, or Gparted) and run the partitioning software from there. It is called Gparted and is very much like Partition Magic.

You don't have to install Linux. It will run from CD.

 

thanks for the help!

any guesses as to what Disk 0 is? Is that another tiny partition on the same drive? Is that my Intel Turbo Memory? I'm a little curious about it before I do anything to the current partitions.

 

you're welcome.
As for the 513 MB partition... Yes, I guess it's the readyboost memory.
A partition on the same disk should show up on the same bar as the others, not as a separate disk (or at least this is what the civilized world would expect )

EDIT: Intel Turbo Memory? I've heard about it, but I am not able to recall whee should that be stored. Is it somewhere on the mobo? If so, check up your manuals.

 

Manipulate? It appears this utility only REPORTS the disk use.

Gary