Aoili wrote:
Win 7 Pro

Three partitions.
C: is getting full.

D: and E: have vacant space.

Want to get rid of D: and share space with C: and E:.

Making C: larger and new D: larger.

How to steps?
Best tool ?

Thank you !

The easiest thing to do, would be to delete D: in
Disk Management and expand C: to use the space freed up.
That can be done using Windows itself.

*******

The most efficient tool is a Partition Manager. It performs
the tricky task of moving the origin of E: for you. After that,
you can expand E: until it fills the "right-hand end" of the disk.
Examples would be the free Paragon tool, or there is Easeus EPM
(partition master).

http://download.cnet.com/Paragon-Par...-10904411.html

pm14free_x64_eng.exe 53,091,632 bytes
SHA1: 86265FECFFCC1467F6C8D725D22899E30B5BC55F

This is an example of the usual dialog for move/resize, either
of which is possible in the dialog. Paragon is a bit old fashioned
about some of its operations, requiring reboots and the like.
Moving E: should be easy, because it's "not C: " . It's the
C: partition which requires the most crude techniques, because
the OS can't be running if you move the origin of C: .

https://s2.postimg.cc/ds20vlro9/resize.gif

*******

If you are skilled in the art of "disk dump", you can use "dd"
to move E: . You need dd from chrysocome and ptedit32 to do it.
You use the "seek" and "skip" options of dd, to move a partition
to any arbitrary location. PTEDIT32 is used to edit the partition
table, and "move" the offset of the partition (the new origin of E: ).
You must be adept with a calculator. That's the worst part of
the whole thing, is having to use calculator and paper/pencil.

Of course nobody actually does this. I did it once, as a bar bet,
and it worked on the first try. But it's "hold my beer" material,
and 99 times out of a 100, there will be a big big mess... :-)

*******

You can also do the necessary manipulation, using nothing
more than Macrium Reflect Free. You need a second drive to
temporarily hold a backup of E: . You back up E: then restore
it by dragging and dropping E: from its backup image, into the
appropriate space on the disk. This allow the origin to be
moved.

Normally, when you restore the "entire" backup of a Macrium backup,
the origins don't move. You can move the right edge of each
partition (you're allowed to resize them), but the origins
won't move.

However, if you backup E: , then delete E: from the original
disk, plus do your other steps with C: and D: , you can
pretend to do a restore of E: . While the E: disk image is
on the screen, you drag and drop E: (instead of "doing a whole
restore"), and then, only an operation involving E: is done.
When you slap it down like that, it snugs up against the
edge of C: (as that's all that's on the disk when you
are restoring E: ). Then, using the resize dialog in Macrium,
you can move the right edge of E: out to touch the end of the
disk. And during the restore, the partition will receive its
new size. It's the dragging and dropping which allows E:
to have an arbitrary origin. And that origin is determined
by moving the right edge of C: until it's consumed the
correct percentage of the D: that was freed up.

*******

Anyway, that's a variety of ways to do it. And I use Paragon,
simply because "it's not Easeus" :-) Easeus in the past,
had OpenCandy in it, and the OpenCandy has been disarmed,
but not removed. This annoys me. Companies should decide
whether they're badasses or not, and not sit on the
fence and then expect customers to defend them. If you're
going to put OpenCandy in something, arm the ****ing thing
and get it over with. And then I won't have to write sob
stories about why I won't use your product.

As far as I know, Easeus EPM is "safe" at the moment,
so go right ahead, and knock yourself out. Only an
aggressive AV might notice stuff like that. I'm not going
to do extra downloads, or sit around analyzing that.
Perhaps someone else will do that for us.

The Paragon on the other hand, much of the menus are grayed
out on the free version, and it has limited functionality.
But it might be enough to get this job done.

I had the misfortune to buy a copy of Acronis Disk Director,
which is a Partition Manager. And it had a bug in one
of its functions which caused data loss. And that's the
thing about Partition Managers. You can't trust *anyone*
to make one. Each tool you elect to evaluate, you make *backups*
before you use it the first time. If you have sufficient
successes with various test cases you run, gradually
you take the leash off it. PowerQuest is the only company
I might have trusted to make one, but Symantec bought
them out. And everyone else is "Trust but Verify".
If a tool passes your AV sniff test, then your
next step is the backup of the disk you're about
to ruin, then you test the tool and see whether the
disk survives.

In the case with Acronis, I happened to look at System32
in File Explorer. And I happened to notice a few DLLs
were of zero size. That's how I determine the cluster
size change I attempted, had failed. I didn't actually
have to wait until those zero-sized DLLs were executed,
and I knew right away the partition was "toast". But,
I had a backup, because I never believed them for a
moment that they could change the cluster size. There
are lots of rules about cluster size changes, and the
odds of anyone writing software to do this, are slim
to none. I wasn't exactly surprised at the result. But
on the other hand, if you put a function in a commercial
tool people pay money for, it damn well better work!
If the tool never mentioned cluster size change, I
probably would not have bought it.

Paul