Resizing hard drive in new Windows 7

[Berni]

I have just purchased a new computer which came with Windows 7 home premium 64bit preinstalled with a 1T hard drive. I want to partition the available 931g hard drive into two partitions. I followed the instructions in Disk Management and shrunk the 931g partition by creating a 459.04g partition (blue line at top) and another simple partition of 451.38g which says it is unallocated and has a black line at the top. HOW do I make the unallocated partition active (I have followed the new partition wizard but end up with a message box which eventually tells me no.) I have repartitioned hard drives in the distant past but used a program for that purpose which I no longer have. Any advice would be appreciated Thanks. Berni

 

[clifford_cooley]

Hi Berni - Welcome to w7forums

First thing you need to realize before we continue is that you can only have one active partition. Setting a active partition is a flag that lets the system know which partition to boot from.

If you are asking how to make the partition that you just created usable. Then a simple format will do the trick.

 

[Berni]

Thanks for your reply - I have followed the wizard but it asks if I want to make the partition dynamic - if I say no it closes - if I say yes I get a message that says "There is no enough space available on the disc to complete this operation".
During the wizard the max size of the partition is 429907 and the minimum is 8, I set the partition to be 429000 so I am confused about the message I receive.
Could you give me the necessary steps as in A,B,C - I really do not want to leave this partition at 931g. I have partitioned removal hard drives before Windows 7 and cannot remember ever having this problem. Your further advice would be appreciated. Many thanks. Berni

 

[clifford_cooley]

Here is a post from another thread. If you are having troubles with Disk Managment you might want to try something different.

To just re-format the partitions you want to keep, download a copy of Partition Wizard. Its a free program, you can install it to Windows or you can download the CD bootable ISO image and burn it to a CD or CD-RW. You can get it here.

About Partition Wizard

• Partition Wizard is a Windows based partition manager.
  
  
  
• It supports both MBR and GUID partition table format running on 32/64 bits Operating System including Windows XP, Vista, Windows Server 2000/2003/2008, and Windows 7. Working as partition magic, Partition Wizard provides powerful and professional functions to manage partition including Move/Resize Partition, Copy Partition, Create Partition, Delete Partition, Format Partition, Convert File System, Hide/Unhide Partition, Explore Partition, Partition Recovery and much more.
  Partition Wizard allow home users, business users, and system administrators to easily perform partition operations safely and quickly. The Enhanced Data Protecting technology keeps your data safe even in cases of power outages or hardware failure.
• Partition Wizard is provided absolutely FREE OF CHARGE for homes and businesses.
  Partition Wizard is optimized and divided into Home, Business, Server, and Enterprise Edition.

Partition Wizard Bootable CD

Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to boot computer directly into Partition Wizard to manage partitions. Features including Rebuild MBR, Partition Recovery, Move/Resize Partition, Copy Partition, Create Partition, Delete Partition, Format Partition, Convert File System, Hide/Unhide Partition, Explore Partition...

 

[Berni]

Resizing partition

Attn: Clifford
Firstly my sincere apologies for not replying until now but a death in the family has caused me to not turn on my computer for over a month.
I finally solved my problem by using Easus Partition Manager (free version) which was easy to understand and resized the partition without hassle. I tried it first on a removable hard drive and then was confident to try it on Win 7.
My thanks for your assistance. Your help was much appreciated. Kind regards.Berni

 

[clifford_cooley]

Hi Berni

I'm sorry to hear about your lose.
What a terrible way to end a year.

I'm glad you found a solution and posted back. If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask.