I need an advise

[Net_Surfer]

Hello guys and girls

I need some help, I have a friend that needs to re-size his hard drive without loosing any data.

I hear about few programs that will do this for him....My question is what is the best one and do I have to burn the program to a disk so I can use it or I can download the program to the desktop and run it from there?

I need a free program to do this and some instructions to follow since I never done a re-size before.

Any help will be very appreciated!

Thanks in advance

Net_Surfer

[abseh1]

What OS? Does he want to extend or shrink it?
(The info below covers both)

You may find that you have to change the partition size to increase or decrease the space on a particular drive. Resizing the partition size on a drive can be risky – you may lose or mess up the stored data. Here is the most effective and safest way to resize your hard drive partition without losing any data

Resize Your Hard Drive Partition Without Losing Data - Support.com

Note: The above guide is intended for Windows Vista or Windows 7 users. If you have Windows XP or older Windows operating systems, you will need a third party program

[Net_Surfer]

Hi abseh1

Note: The above guide is intended for Windows Vista or Windows 7 users. If you have Windows XP or older Windows operating systems, you will need a third party program

It is a desktop xp system...

I have a Hirem 10 boot disk that a friend told me that I can use to re-size.....Do that will work? or I have to use another third party software?

Thanks for replying!

Net_Surfer

[abseh1]

I usually use a live Linux CD and boot into Knoppix and then use it to resize

It is very risky...C Drive and WinXP have important info at the beginning of the partition that needs to remain there

Sorry...I have never used Hirem

You are in risky territory

GParted is a Linux program and will work (it is free)
You need to prepare the drive ....including defrag
It is complicated too
The link below is for WinXP
Resizing and Adding Partitions using GParted Live

Sorry this is best I can do...I seldom even try to repartition anymore
I did use Partition Magic 8.0 older version in the past (about $70 and it did work)

BTW: Norton bought them out and no longer sell it anymore....they dropped it

Sorry, we no longer offer Norton Partition Magic.


Dear Customers,

Thank you for your interest in Norton Partition Magic. Due to changing consumer usage trends and Symantec’s desire to offer the highest quality and most innovative solutions for the latest operating systems, Symantec has discontinued Norton Partition Magic 8.0.

May be someone else has a better idea...sorry the GParted link is the best i can do...good luck abs

May be your friend can give you the details on Hirem ?

[Canuck]

Check out FREE Partition Manager feature - Hard disk partition management for Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/Windows 7 (32 bit and 64 bit): resize/move hard disk partition, convert, split and merge partitions, etc. it is a free download for home use. Easeus is recognized as a good software company.

[abseh1]

More info:
If you use GParted you will need to look for an ntfs drive and make sure it is the HDD you want if you have more than one on the WinXP computer

The reason I mention this is grub boots to Linux and uses names like hda etc for windows HDDs...you can easily tell them by the ntfs next to them...if he is using fat32...it gets more confusing but is still a windows HDD

[Net_Surfer]

tHANK YOU for all the info...I had this problem last year, my solution was to re-format my entire hard drive and re-install a clean copy of windows xp to my computer and used only one partition since it was only 80 gb hard drive and that took care of my problem.

Regards
Net_Surfer

[abseh1]

Net_Surfer

See if C HDD has allocated space available if that is the HDD that you want to extend...check this in the WinXP management panel> disk management
If so and you want to use C HDD, it is doable...but backup first
Easy to do if you only have one HDD and are just extending C Drive

tHANK YOU for all the info...I had this problem last year, my solution was to re-format my entire hard drive and re-install a clean copy of windows xp to my computer and used only one partition since it was only 80 gb hard drive and that took care of my problem.

Regards
Net_Surfer

If you do a clean install WinXP will give you an option to partition and assign space to just windows and then leave free allocated for another partition.....that allocated space can be named as a second HDD in Win XP....but it seems you just want one large C HDD...I am not sure....if you have allocated space it can be easily extended
The difficulty is when allocated space is unavailable

The key is the HDD must have allocated space available
How to use Disk Management to configure basic disks in Windows XP



Important

• When you delete a partition or a logical drive, all the data on that partition or logical drive, and the partition or the logical drive, are deleted.
• You cannot delete the system partition, boot partition, or a partition that contains the active paging (swap) file.
• You cannot delete an extended partition unless the extended partition is empty. All logical drives in the extended partition must be deleted before you can delete the extended partition.

Unfortunately, this is a WinXP feature that was changed for the better in Vista and Win7
Vista and Win7 can be done much easier than WinXP