Vista Partitions

Hey,

My Dell Inspiron 6400 came with two different partitions, one with the OS on, and the other which was a "RECOVERY" partition. I have formatted the revovery partition, however i cant seem to "Extend" my C:\ drive to take up the 10gb of unused space. The option is simply greyed out. I didnt have a problem when removing the Media Direct partition. Any solution?

Thanks

 

You can't combine partitions in windows without destroying all data on them. You will have to use a third party program, such as Acronis Disk Director, which is what I always use.

Hopefully someone will know of a free program though that you can use. http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/



The other option, if you're willing to lose your data, is to reinstall Vista and delete both the old D: and the C: partitions, and make a new one to install Windows on.

 

Extending a partition does not destroy data. Anyway, the recovery partition needs to be completely destroyed to where it looks like unallocated space.

To be honest Vista's partition manager is still pretty bad...third party apps recommended. Try GParted Live CD.

 

Uhhhhhh. Last I checked Windows cannot extend partitions. Also last I checked, GParted will destroy all data on a NTFS partition, as I do not believe (could be wrong on this part) that GParted's kernel has NTFS support compiled in.


EDIT: Looked into it and appears I am wrong. I'll leave the post though so you can all laugh at my ignorance.

Here's something actually useful out of me.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial133.html

 

Vista is capable of some level of extending partitions, but I think it has limited capability.

 

Additionally, don't some manufactures lock the partition preventing you from destroying it (within Windows)?

If that is the case programs like GParted would be the easiest method. I use it all the time. Personally I use System Rescue CD because it is bundled with a few useful programs (one of which is GParted).

http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

 

You didn't need to format the recovery partition... you needed to remove the recovery partition entirely. You can do this in Vista's disk manager by right-clicking the parition and selecting "Delete volume...". I'm still not sure if you can extend the main partition to take up its space, but I would think you could, as long as they're next to each other.

Another option is to just leave the partition in place. You can still keep whatever data you want on it, even if it's a separate partition from your main partition.

 

Which is great in case yo need to do a clean install in the future, so you don't have to backup your data, you can use the second partition to store your files.

 

Thanks for the replies. I tried downloading the GParted, but all the files windows cant recognise. Some are .h files

Can you give me a direct download link?

 

Here you go. This is the ISO for GParted:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-livecd-0.3.4-11.iso?modtime=1197927842&big_mirror=0

Here is the ISO for System Rescue CD (that I suggested earlier):

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sy...x86-1.0.3.iso?modtime=1211756891&big_mirror=1

The only difference between the two is that the System Rescue CD has a few other useful tools bundled with it. Try just the GParted CD first though (the first link) just to get you through your current crisis.

 

You don't need gparted, you can do this with built-in Vista tools. It has been said already, but I will say it again.

You need to DELETE THE PARTITION. Formatting it is not good enough. Go into the disk manager, right-click on the D: partition that's empty, and select "Delete volume". Then right click on the C: partition and select Extend.

 

I have tried doing the things you have said, but i simply cant do them. I have added a couple of screens to show you.

Here

And Here

I tried downloading that ISO of GParted ,but when i mounted it virtually, there was not setup file to run .

 

GParted isn't a Windows program, it's a volume in itself. You have to boot into the GParted disc. Which probably means actually burning a disc.

As for the Vista tool... Vista may not have wanted to expand the partition the OS was running on. You could try booting from the Vista disc and use the repair tools command line, and run "Diskpart"... I still don't know if it'll let you expand the partition though. Diskpart command info: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/...lternative-in-windows-vista-2000-2003-and-xp/

EDIT: With GParted, I was assuming you were talking about this ISO: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
Right?

 

I don't think Vista (or any tool for that matter) can directly EXTEND your C: partition into space in front of the C: partition. You would need to "slide" the C: partition into the empty space, so that the empty space is now AFTER the C: partition and THEN you could extend it. But Vista is NOT going to allow you to do this.

Third party tools can acomplish what you want, and they may not require you to specifically slide the existing C: partition, but they will be doing so "behind the scenes".

Gary

 

I think the problem is because the C: drive is already at the end of the drive. You typically expand a partition by adding to the end, not the beginning.

I think your options here are:

1. Make another partition: add a new partition, format it, then store files on the new drive letter. That's messy to me, but it's a way to do it
2. Backup everything, redo your partitions, then restore everything
3. Use another tool like partition magic which might be able to handle something like this.

 

The drive letter changing won't work, been there , tried that.
Use GParted, make sure you download it correctly,burn the iso and follow the instructions...

 

Who suggested drive letter changing? Yep that would never work.

Gary