If you are a Windows user and run into a limited Disk space problem wherein your C Drive is running out of free space and other partitions have plenty to spare, what do you do?
There are two ways to counter this problem:
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Resize your partitions using Windows Disk Management Utility found in Control Panel under Administrative Options
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Resize your partitions using a Live CD of any good Linux CD/DVD eg Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE etc
Here, I’ll talk about both the methods, although, The first method is fairly simple but may not work in all situations.
Method 1 : Using inbuilt Vista Utility
Windows Vista includes a built-in functionality in Disk Management to shrink and expand partitions. No more 3rd party utilities needed!
To get to this utility, open up Control Panel, and type in partition into the search box.. you’ll immediately see the link show up.
Shrink a Partition
In the Disk Management screen, just right-click on the partition that you want to shrink, and select “Shrink Volume” from the menu.
In the Shrink dialog, you will want to enter the amount you want to shrink by, not the new size. For example, if you want to shrink your 50gb partition by roughly 10gb so that it will now be roughly 40gb, enter 10000 into the box:
Extend a Partition
In the Disk Management screen, just right-click on the partition that you want to shrink, and select “Extend Volume” from the menu.
On this screen, you can specify the amount that you want to increase the partition by. In this case, I’m going to extend it back to the roughly 50GB size that it was before.
Note that the extend partition feature only works with contiguous space and therefore may not work if you have a Primary Partition and would like to extend it to the free space of the Logical Drives. Hence, you’ll have to use the second method i.e using a Live CD/DVD
Method 2 : Using a Live CD/DVD
One of the more advanced options for resizing your Windows Vista partition is to use the Live CD, a bootable linux CD that takes you straight into GParted, the great linux utility for managing partitions. The problem is that if you resize your boot/system partition, you will be completely unable to boot without repairing windows.
First make sure that you have a bootable Windows Vista installation DVD, as you will be unable to use your computer if you don’t. Next, download the GParted Live CD and burn it to cd or use Ubuntu.
Boot off the GParted CD, and you will see your hard drives in the drop-down list. The first drive is typically your boot drive, but you can check the Flags column to make sure. In case of Ubuntu head to Applications->GParted under System.
Next you’ll need to right-click on the partition and choose Resize/Move from the menu.
Now you can either use the New Size textbox, or just click and drag the partition to make it smaller (or bigger). When you are done, click the Resize/Move button.
This doesn’t immediately apply the changes, though.
You can make other changes to your partitions and then when you are finished click the Apply button.
Depending on the amount of data and the speed of your computer, it can take quite a while to resize the partitions. On my computer it took more than 30 minutes.
Once it’s done, quit, remove the live cd and then reboot your computer. Insert your Windows Vista installation DVD and make sure you boot off it. At the welcome screen click the Next button.
On the next screen, click the “Repair your computer” link in the lower left hand corner.
The system recover options dialog will show up, and will ask you if you want to Repair and restart, which we do.
If you happened to click the View details link you’ll see that the error is “Windows Device: Partition=Not found”, which indicates the problem is the partition that we resized.
Your computer will reboot, and you’ll see Windows Vista in the list although it now has a different name indicating that it was recovered.
Related posts:
- How to Resize partition for free in Windows XP
- Fix Windows : Create Your Own Ultimate Recovery CD
- How to send a defective hard disk for replacement
- How to Recover/Restore a Deleted Partition
- WinXP Addon – Analyze disk usage and file structure with ease
- List of Windows XP installation Issues
- Windows Live Writer for Windows Mobile
- How to install IIS7 in Windows Vista
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice piece of info..TFS
Great info, i used 7tools manager to get back the lost partition when i used linux with windwos.
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