Partition Work

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 !

On 3/12/19 12:39 AM, 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 !


Hi Aoili,

https://spins.fedoraproject.org/xfce/
gparted (its on the spin by my request)

Backup up your stuff first!
-T

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

On Tue, 12 Mar 2019 00:39:53 -0700, Aoili "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 !

We each have our favorite tool for the job and mine is Minitool
Partition Wizard Free. The free version will do what you're asking.

https://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

When you run the program, you'll see your disk with its 3 partitions.
Using your mouse, you can shrink D: and expand C: and E:, then in
Windows Explorer move the rest of D:'s contents until D: is empty, then
go back to Minitool Partition Wizard and delete D:. Expand C: or E: to
fill the space left by D:.

With programs like Minitool Partition Wizard, you make some or all of
the changes that you'd like to make, then you 'Apply' those changes by
hitting Apply in the upper left of the GUI. Unless and until you click
Apply, absolutely no changes will be made to your disk, so you can try
out a scenario and abandon it (Discard) if you don't like it.

Highly recommended program. I've used it dozens and dozens of times over
the years and it has never let me down.

--

Char Jackson

"Paul" wrote

| 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.

That's a good point. It's hard to test dependability.
I've used BootIt for probably more than a decade now,
without ever having a single glitch. And there's very
good help that can be run with the program. I use it
for all partitioning, imaging, booting.

Cons: It's not free. $40, I think. And it doesn't hand-hold.
People have to have a basic idea of what they're doing.
A lot of so-called partition and disk programs these days
are really just glorified backup programs, leading people
to think that System Restore-esque functionality is
disk imaging.

I also used Powerquest back in the 90s. Partition
Magic and Drive Magic were $70 each, on sale $100
for the two. Powerquest milked the market badly
because they had the only dependable, easy-to-use
product. It was also incredibly slow.

"Aoili" "Aoili wrote

| 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 ?
|

An important point that I don't think has been
mentioned yet: You need to back up data on D, or
move it to E, before proceeding. There's no way to
just split the partition with the data on it. The data
will be lost when D is deleted.

In message , Aoili "Aoili
writes:
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?

These are what I'd do using the EaseUS partition manager - though the
built-in utility in 7 might do them:

0. Back up everything (of course).
1. Move whatever's on D: to E:.

(Those are independent of choice of tool.)

2. Remove D:.
3. Expand C: to include the space where D: was.

Done. Assuming you are happy with the sizes you'll get.

HOWEVER!

I would take a look at WHY your C: is getting full. For 7, I'd say 50 -
maybe 100 if you have a 1T or bigger drive - G is more than enough for
C: for Windows 7. Mine's 100 (well 99.9) as I have a 1T (well of course
only 931G really) drive, but only 34.8G occupied after some while using
7. I'm sure we can (and probably will) argue forever about the numbers,
but I'd definitely look into it. How big _is_ your C:, how much (if more
than say 40G) _is_ used, and (again if over 40G) what is the main thing
occupying it? (I like WinDirStat for assessing that; others will have
their own suggestions.)

Best tool ?

Last time I wanted a partition manager, I got the EaseUS one, and since
it does what I want, I haven't looked at any others, so I can't say if
it's better or worse than any. Its user interface is to me _very_ like
the one that comes as part of 7 ("Create and manage hard disc
partitions" - start typing partiti into the start box and it should
appear), though that may be true of most of them.

Thank you !

YW; HIH.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)[email protected]+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The desire to remain private and/or anonymous used to be a core British value,
but in recent times it has been treated with suspicion - an unfortunate by-
product of the widespread desire for fame. - Chris Middleton,
Computing 6 September 2011

On 03/12/2019 9:13 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 12 Mar 2019 00:39:53 -0700, Aoili "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 !

We each have our favorite tool for the job and mine is Minitool
Partition Wizard Free. The free version will do what you're asking.

https://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

When you run the program, you'll see your disk with its 3 partitions.
Using your mouse, you can shrink D: and expand C: and E:, then in
Windows Explorer move the rest of D:'s contents until D: is empty, then
go back to Minitool Partition Wizard and delete D:. Expand C: or E: to
fill the space left by D:.

With programs like Minitool Partition Wizard, you make some or all of
the changes that you'd like to make, then you 'Apply' those changes by
hitting Apply in the upper left of the GUI. Unless and until you click
Apply, absolutely no changes will be made to your disk, so you can try
out a scenario and abandon it (Discard) if you don't like it.

Highly recommended program. I've used it dozens and dozens of times over
the years and it has never let me down.


I Agree with Char 100%, Minitool Partition Wizard is the best partition
program I have ever used.

Rene

Thanks all

Success !

I deleted all data on D:

Ran EaseUS (older version) and it was easy to delete partition and
resize C:

This PC is rather old and I must have set up these C:, D: and E:
partitions long ago. The deal was to make this a dual-boot with Win XP
as bootable. Never accomplished that.

C: was only 100 GBytes using about 70G. Now 150 GBytes.

Now all I need is a Win 7 Pro OS for my personal use.

Old EaseUS was already on the PS so I use that and it looked familiar.

Old age got me here.

So thanks again to stimulating my old brain cells.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

In message , Aioli
writes:
Thanks all

Success !

I deleted all data on D:

Ran EaseUS (older version) and it was easy to delete partition and
resize C:

Good - that's what I would have done ...
[]
C: was only 100 GBytes using about 70G. Now 150 GBytes.

.... except that I'd _definitely_ be investigating why I had so much on
C:.

(I'm assuming you set most things _not_ to save what they create on C:,
but on D: or elsewhere. That's what _most_ here do - though not all.)
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)[email protected]+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Listen, three-eyes, don't you try to out-wierd me, I get stranger things than
you free with my breakfast cereal. (Zaphod Beeblebrox in the link episode)

On 12/03/2019 07:39, Aoili wrote:


How to steps?

1) Advertise in your local paper for an IT technician;
2) Make sure the migrant technicians have H-1B visa;
3) Interview the guy who responds to your ad;
4) Discuss the fee for the job;
4) Send a successful letter to the guy you think can do the job.

Hope this helps.

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Subject: Partition Work
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