non destructive partitioning

[Jeff]

I'm setting up my wife's new laptop which runs W7 64 bit whose HD comes
in a single partition plus a hidden restore partition.
I like to have a separate data partition for easier backups. Any
suggestions for a free utility that will permit resizing and creating
new partitions in W 7 64 bit?

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I'm setting up my wife's new laptop which runs W7 64 bit whose HD comes
in a single partition plus a hidden restore partition.
I like to have a separate data partition for easier backups. Any
suggestions for a free utility that will permit resizing and creating
new partitions in W 7 64 bit?

Here are two of many:

http://www.partition-tool.com/

http://partitionwizard.com/index.html

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Jeff.

Sure. You already have it in Win7: Disk Management.

Just click the orb or press the Windows key, type in "diskmgmt.msc" (with or
without the quotes) and press <Enter>.

You'll need to furnish Administrator credentials because this program is
powerful enough to do harm if used carelessly, but you should have no
problems with it.

Select the Boot Volume (probably Drive C and use the Shrink volume...
command. Reduce the size of that partition to about 100 GB. The new size
is up to you, actually, but make it at least 30 GB; Win7 really grows with
use! (Careful: The size is shown in MEGAbytes, not GIGAbytes, so to shrink
it by 150 GB, type in 15000 MB.) Then right-click in the newly-vacated Free
Space and select New Simple volume... and follow the instructions. (The
defaults are usually correct.)

Be sure to name the new volume something descriptive; this "label" will be
written to the disk and will not change later, even if the drive letter gets
changed in some way. (The name will survive even if the disk is moved to a
different computer. It's a good idea to give a name to your existing
partitions, too.)

Of course, you can choose to divide your Free space into multiple volumes
depending on your needs/wants.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1

 

[arnold]

Here are two of many:

http://www.partition-tool.com/

http://partitionwizard.com/index.html

http://partedmagic.com/doku.php

 

[Jeff]

WOW, I had no idea that Windows diskmgmt can now shrink partitions. It
did not used to be able to do much more than delete and create
partitions in XP. I will look into it (after I create a full image backup).
Thanks.

 

[Roy Smith]

Hi, Jeff.

Sure. You already have it in Win7: Disk Management.

Just click the orb or press the Windows key, type in "diskmgmt.msc"
(with or without the quotes) and press <Enter>.

You'll need to furnish Administrator credentials because this program is
powerful enough to do harm if used carelessly, but you should have no
problems with it.

Select the Boot Volume (probably Drive C and use the Shrink volume...
command. Reduce the size of that partition to about 100 GB. The new
size is up to you, actually, but make it at least 30 GB; Win7 really
grows with use! (Careful: The size is shown in MEGAbytes, not
GIGAbytes, so to shrink it by 150 GB, type in 15000 MB.) Then
right-click in the newly-vacated Free Space and select New Simple
volume... and follow the instructions. (The defaults are usually correct.)

Be sure to name the new volume something descriptive; this "label" will
be written to the disk and will not change later, even if the drive
letter gets changed in some way. (The name will survive even if the
disk is moved to a different computer. It's a good idea to give a name
to your existing partitions, too.)

Of course, you can choose to divide your Free space into multiple
volumes depending on your needs/wants.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1

You did leave out one thing... Disk Management will not resize a mounted
partition. So if the OP wanted to do this on his wife's laptop he would
have to remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an enclosure,
then connect it to another PC running Windows 7.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 6.0.2
Saturday, September 24, 2011 6:02:17 PM

 

[Jeff]

You did leave out one thing... Disk Management will not resize a mounted
partition. So if the OP wanted to do this on his wife's laptop he would
have to remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an enclosure,
then connect it to another PC running Windows 7.

Ah! Have to look elsewhere .....

 

[Roy Smith]

I'm setting up my wife's new laptop which runs W7 64 bit whose HD comes
in a single partition plus a hidden restore partition.
I like to have a separate data partition for easier backups. Any
suggestions for a free utility that will permit resizing and creating
new partitions in W 7 64 bit?

Creating your backups onto the same physical hard drive as your OS is
not a wise idea. Even though it may be on a different partition, when
the drive fails not only would you lose the OS partition, you'd lose the
backups as well. It's better to use a network attached storage device,
or a USB drive for storing your backups instead.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 6.0.2
Saturday, September 24, 2011 6:08:23 PM

 

[KCB]

You did leave out one thing... Disk Management will not resize a mounted
partition. So if the OP wanted to do this on his wife's laptop he would
have to remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an enclosure,
then connect it to another PC running Windows 7.

He can shrink the volume while he's running from it. I just did it on my
Win7 C:\, so that I could install the Win8 Dev on a separate partition.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Hi, Jeff.

Sure. You already have it in Win7: Disk Management.

Just click the orb or press the Windows key, type in "diskmgmt.msc" (with or
without the quotes) and press <Enter>.

You'll need to furnish Administrator credentials because this program is
powerful enough to do harm if used carelessly, but you should have no
problems with it.

Select the Boot Volume (probably Drive C and use the Shrink volume...
command. Reduce the size of that partition to about 100 GB. The new size
is up to you, actually, but make it at least 30 GB; Win7 really grows with
use! (Careful: The size is shown in MEGAbytes, not GIGAbytes, so to shrink
it by 150 GB, type in 15000 MB.) Then right-click in the newly-vacated Free
Space and select New Simple volume... and follow the instructions. (The
defaults are usually correct.)

Be sure to name the new volume something descriptive; this "label" will be
written to the disk and will not change later, even if the drive letter gets
changed in some way. (The name will survive even if the disk is moved to a
different computer. It's a good idea to give a name to your existing
partitions, too.)

Of course, you can choose to divide your Free space into multiple volumes
depending on your needs/wants.

RC

Agreed, but the other programs were handy when disk management wouldn't
do what I needed.

Don't ask - I have forgotten, since I don't do it all that often, but I
seem to recall something related to rearranging partitions on an
external backup drive.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Creating your backups onto the same physical hard drive as your OS is
not a wise idea. Even though it may be on a different partition, when
the drive fails not only would you lose the OS partition, you'd lose the
backups as well. It's better to use a network attached storage device,
or a USB drive for storing your backups instead.

I was assuming that Jeff meant it was easier to back up *from* a second
partition, not *to* it.

 

[Paul]

You did leave out one thing... Disk Management will not resize a mounted
partition. So if the OP wanted to do this on his wife's laptop he would
have to remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an enclosure,
then connect it to another PC running Windows 7.

On my 320GB laptop drive, the most important restriction was, Windows 7
couldn't move metadata located dead center in the partition. I could only
shrink C: by half roughly. That may be enough to achieve the desired
result (two partitions), but may not leave the user happy with achieving
exact size values. I used Raxco PerfectDisk (evaluation copy), to move
the metadata to the left, and allow the W7 shrink to make one more try
at it. Doing that over and over again, I eventually got C:
down to 30-40GB or so (I'm back at 40GB right now, 30GB was too small).
Once Raxco got the job done, I un-installed it.

So without any monkey business, I might have been able to shrink to the
160GB range, using nothing but Windows 7 built-in functions.

The Sysinternals "contig" program, claims to be able to interact with
metadata files, but I have my doubts it would do anything more than
Windows 7 does already. Some of the disk defragmenter companies,
seem to be able to deal with just about anything of that nature,
implying they're doing more than using the defragmenter API to
get the job done.

Paul

 

[Ken Blake]

Creating your backups onto the same physical hard drive as your OS is
not a wise idea. Even though it may be on a different partition, when
the drive fails not only would you lose the OS partition, you'd lose the
backups as well. It's better to use a network attached storage device,
or a USB drive for storing your backups instead.

Yes, of course what you say is correct. But I think he meant that he
wanted the data on a separate partition because he wanted to backup
only data, and that's easiest when it's a separate partition.

I normally think it's a mistake for most people to have multiple
partitions, but to me, that's one of the few good reasons for having
them.

 

[Char Jackson]

On my 320GB laptop drive, the most important restriction was, Windows 7
couldn't move metadata located dead center in the partition. I could only
shrink C: by half roughly. That may be enough to achieve the desired
result (two partitions), but may not leave the user happy with achieving
exact size values. I used Raxco PerfectDisk (evaluation copy),

IMHO, the main problem was that you reached for the wrong type of tool
for the job. You grabbed a defragger when what you really needed was a
partition manager, and I don't include Win 7's Disk Management tool in
that category because of its limitations. With a proper partition
manager, you'd have completed the task in one shot rather than
multiple iterations.

 

[Paul]

IMHO, the main problem was that you reached for the wrong type of tool
for the job. You grabbed a defragger when what you really needed was a
partition manager, and I don't include Win 7's Disk Management tool in
that category because of its limitations. With a proper partition
manager, you'd have completed the task in one shot rather than
multiple iterations.

At the time, I was fascinated with the fact, that my shiny new
OS had a "shrink" function. So I started playing with it.

The objective was to shrink things, to reduce the time to do
certain kinds of backups. (For the longest while, up until a
few days ago, that space was left unallocated.)

In the process, the first thing I noticed, was I got stuck at
160GB or so. On Googling for that, the mention of PerfectDisk
as a workaround came up.

So I didn't go in necessarily with partitioning in mind. I wanted
to see whether the Microsoft "shrink" could do the job, and it
couldn't. And since using the evaluation copy of a defragmenter
would get the job done, and then I could dump it, I was happy.

Vetting partitioning tools, would have taken me more time,
than going the route I did. And virtually anything I've looked
at to date, has some kind of issue or another.

At the time, I had backup space available, but it was spread all
over the place. Later on, it took me the better part of a
day, to move the backup files around and consolidate enough
space so I could work on the laptop again in relative safety.

My level of organization, is to put a sticker on each backup drive,
with a few words as to what might be stored on it. I don't have a
"central server" or NAS or anything like that, as I can't afford
to buy too much new crap. Just make do with the old crap.

Paul

 

[Monty]

I'm setting up my wife's new laptop which runs W7 64 bit whose HD comes
in a single partition plus a hidden restore partition.
I like to have a separate data partition for easier backups. Any
suggestions for a free utility that will permit resizing and creating
new partitions in W 7 64 bit?

Hi Jeff,

Have just been through this exercise twice in the past month, although
with desktop PCs (belonging to other people) rather than laptops.

The program I used was EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition 9.0 (9.1
has just become available). I have been using EASEUS products for a
few years (since v3.0) without problems. You can read further at
http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

I would also endorse the suggestion earlier in this thread to also
give your partitions a name - as an additional check that you are
working on the partition you intended to.

Cheers,

 

[Stan Brown]

I'm setting up my wife's new laptop which runs W7 64 bit whose HD comes
in a single partition plus a hidden restore partition.
I like to have a separate data partition for easier backups. Any
suggestions for a free utility that will permit resizing and creating
new partitions in W 7 64 bit?

I suggest using Windows 7.


Click the start button, type "partition" (without quotes), and select
the obvious in the results list.

 

[Roy Smith]

He can shrink the volume while he's running from it. I just did it on
my Win7 C:\, so that I could install the Win8 Dev on a separate partition.

Ugh.... you're correct! Must have been a brain fart and was thinking
about GParted for Linux instead. Though there is a limitation in that
you can only reduce the size of a partition until you reach the first
unmovable block... which sometimes doesn't reduce a partition as much
as one would like.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 6.0.2
Sunday, September 25, 2011 8:28:51 AM

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

On 9/24/2011 4:29 PM, R. C. White wrote:
Hi, Jeff.

Sure. You already have it in Win7: Disk Management.

Just click the orb or press the Windows key, type in "diskmgmt.msc"
(with or without the quotes) and press <Enter>.

[]
He can shrink the volume while he's running from it. I just did it on
my Win7 C:\, so that I could install the Win8 Dev on a separate partition.

Ugh.... you're correct! Must have been a brain fart and was thinking
about GParted for Linux instead. Though there is a limitation in that
you can only reduce the size of a partition until you reach the first
unmovable block... which sometimes doesn't reduce a partition as much
as one would like.

Yes, I found this with some data in about the middle of the partition I
was trying to shrink (500G drive, I was trying to make a 30 or 40 G
OS-plus-software drive and have the rest for data).

I looked for free software and found "Free Partition Software - MiniTool
Partition Wizard Home Edition" did the job for me and was easy to use,
so didn't try any others. The file I fetched was pwhe6.exe; I see
they're now on 7.0 of which I have no experience.
http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

# 10^-12 boos = 1 picoboo # 2*10^3 mockingbirds = 2 kilo mockingbird
# 10^21 piccolos = 1 gigolo # 10^12 microphones = 1 megaphone
# 10**9 questions = 1 gigawhat

 

[XS11E]

Ah! Have to look elsewhere .....

No, Roy is mistaken. Disk Management will resize drive C: from within
Windows.

AAMOF, that may be the best way to do it as you're prevented from doing
bad things such as making the C: partition too small.