"Growing" a Disk Partition

TheMarshal

I recently bought a 1TB drive to supplement my existing 200GB drive. The original drive was split into two partitions. I've migrated everything off of the second partition and on to the new drive, and now I want to extend the existing partition (where Windows XP is installed) into the old space.

I've been trying to use the "diskpart" command-line utility, but every time I try to extend the old partition, it says that it's not valid for extending.

Any ideas?

PaleCommander

If you're booting off the partition you're trying to extend, it's quite possible your partitioning utility doesn't like that. Try booting off something else and using a partition utility, like one that comes with a bootable Windows or Linux live disc (I don't recall off the top of my head how good the partition editor that comes on the XP install disc is, but it may be worth a shot if you have that lying around).

DrFrylock

I have had excellent luck doing this using a GParted LiveCD.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Although the OS on the CD is Linux, I have expanded several Windows partitions this way with no ill effects.

saint2e

Yeah I used "Partition Logic" when I was trying to do something similar:

http://visopsys.org/partlogic/

It's free and works rather well.

bowen

DrFrylock wrote: »

I have had excellent luck doing this using a GParted LiveCD.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

Although the OS on the CD is Linux, I have expanded several Windows partitions this way with no ill effects.

This is a good free solution.

If you have money to drop, partition magic is a good alternative, but I have had no issues using gparted for a while now.

Krikee

Delete your second partition.
Convert your drive to dynamic.
You should then be able to extend your partition.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308424

Fantasma

Grow is not the correct term, you should just resize, Acronis Partition Manager can do that and there is no need to delete, reformat, re-install WinXP.

illig

Try partition magic

just know that resizing partitions is wrought with potential issues... (i.e. make sure your data is backed up)

Fantasma

illig wrote: »

Try partition magic

just know that resizing partitions is wrought with potential issues... (i.e. make sure your data is backed up)

The dangers are mostly related to power failures when doing it, a good UPS is always good idea.

Endomatic

It'll be like a tower of hanoi, only the pieces are your files.