Disk Management - Shrinks, but Won't Move?

[croy]

Trying to shift a little disk space from one logical drive
to another (on the same physical drive).

The Win7 DiskManagement allows me to shrink a volume, but I
don't see any way to move it, to give me room to extend the
second one.

I assume that if I delete these two volumes, and then make
two new ones, the drive letters will get shifted all around
- true?

Am I missing something?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Trying to shift a little disk space from one logical drive
to another (on the same physical drive).

The Win7 DiskManagement allows me to shrink a volume, but I
don't see any way to move it, to give me room to extend the
second one.

I assume that if I delete these two volumes, and then make
two new ones, the drive letters will get shifted all around
- true?

Am I missing something?

Yes.

You can make permanent reassignments of drive letters. It's probably
easiest to do this after the fact, but if your two partitions are D: and
E:, that's what you'll most likely get anyway. I hope you're not
planning to erase C:...

But what's easiest is to look for free third party partitioning software
that makes changes non-destructively. Google for partitioning software.

Here's one that I have (but haven't used in years): Gnome Partition
Editor, http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

You download the iso file, burn it as a CD image to a CD, then boot from
it. Then you're free to mess up your system any way you like

 

[Char Jackson]

Trying to shift a little disk space from one logical drive
to another (on the same physical drive).

The Win7 DiskManagement allows me to shrink a volume, but I
don't see any way to move it, to give me room to extend the
second one.

I assume that if I delete these two volumes, and then make
two new ones, the drive letters will get shifted all around
- true?

Am I missing something?

Could you be talked into combining the two logical drives into a
single logical drive? If so, then making space becomes a non-issue as
folders would be used for organization rather than logical drives.

 

[Gordon]

Trying to shift a little disk space from one logical drive
to another (on the same physical drive).

The Win7 DiskManagement allows me to shrink a volume, but I
don't see any way to move it, to give me room to extend the
second one.

Correct. The built-in Windows Partition manager won't do that.
I second the recommendation for GParted - I use it all the time and it
is excellent.
A word of Warning though - do *NOT* cancel any operation half way
through. (Bitter experience....)

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

Correct. The built-in Windows Partition manager won't do that.
I second the recommendation for GParted - I use it all the time and it
is excellent. > A word of Warning though - do *NOT* cancel any
operation half way through. (Bitter experience....)

I have been using Partition Wizard, not for any particular reason except
that I like the GUI. Is there any reason I should use GParted instead?

 

[Gordon]

I have been using Partition Wizard, not for any particular reason except
that I like the GUI. Is there any reason I should use GParted instead?

Not particularly. use whatever works best for you...

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Not particularly. use whatever works best for you...

I agree. I mentioned GParted because that's all I could think of right
then, and I spelled the name out because I keep getting the short name
wrong

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

I agree. I mentioned GParted because that's all I could think of right
then, and I spelled the name out because I keep getting the short name
wrong

I have Partition Wizard and Parted Magic with Clonezilla, which includes
GParted. I used PartitionMagic for years before it was assimilated by the
Borg and became irrelevant.

 

[croy]

Correct. The built-in Windows Partition manager won't do that.
I second the recommendation for GParted - I use it all the time and it
is excellent.
A word of Warning though - do *NOT* cancel any operation half way
through. (Bitter experience....)

I thought that had read somewhere that GPartEd was dangerous
to use on a Windows 7 system.

 

[Gordon]

I thought that had read somewhere that GPartEd was dangerous
to use on a Windows 7 system.

Works here OK....

 

[Roy Smith]

I thought that had read somewhere that GPartEd was dangerous
to use on a Windows 7 system.

It's about as risky to use on a WIn 7 system as Microsoft's own disk
manager that's included in Win 7. In other words if you don't know what
you're doing you can totally hose your system.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Professional
Thunderbird 3.1.4
Tuesday, September 21, 2010 9:35:47 PM

 

[croy]

It's about as risky to use on a WIn 7 system as Microsoft's own disk
manager that's included in Win 7. In other words if you don't know what
you're doing you can totally hose your system.

Why do you think GPartEd would show my new SATA drive as all
unallocated, when I can boot Win7 from it, and use files
that are stored on it, and the Win7 DiskMgmt shows it being
partitioned with 5 different drive letters?

Just curious.

 

[Gordon]

Why do you think GPartEd would show my new SATA drive as all
unallocated, when I can boot Win7 from it, and use files
that are stored on it, and the Win7 DiskMgmt shows it being
partitioned with 5 different drive letters?

Dunno. Works OK here on my SATA drive.....

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Trying to shift a little disk space from one logical drive
to another (on the same physical drive).

The Win7 DiskManagement allows me to shrink a volume, but I
don't see any way to move it, to give me room to extend the
second one.

Boot It Next Generation (BING) will allow you to do that.

I assume that if I delete these two volumes, and then make
two new ones, the drive letters will get shifted all around
- true?

Am I missing something?

Yeah, but with Windows NT and later, you've been able to rename drive
letters, or even make do without drive letters at all (i.e. mount a
drive on a subfolder).

Yousuf Khan