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How do I expand a partition at the beginning of a drive while preserving the partition after it?

I have a 250 GB HDD. The first 30 GB partition (C:) is my Windows installation and nothing else. The rest of the HDD (D:) has all of my valuable stuff on it: programs, documents, music, etc.

Vista is now eating up that 30 GB, and I badly need to expand it to 60 GB or so. How can I expand my C: drive so that it is 60 GB and shrink my D: drive so that it is 190 GB without formatting any part of my HDD? Is that possible?

Duncan Meyers

It certainly is possible providing there's enough free space in either partition to move stuff around.. Download gparted from http://gparted.sourceforge.net, burn it to a CD and boot your computer from the CD. YOu can then resize partitions as necessary. More info here: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php and FAQ here: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/faq.php

Duncan Meyers

And read this before you start! http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-gparted-to-resize-your-windows-vista-partition/

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Gary Case

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noxcho

If you use 32bit system then this free version of Paragon Partition Manager Express can do it for you in few steps: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/download.html
If you decide to use any of partitioning tool, first take backup image of your system and data using this free backup software: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/download.html

stevetellis

ASKER

Linux does not work with my computer for some reason. It always freezes as soon as the window system comes up. Therefore I could not use GParted, which is ok because GParted apparently required a repair of Vista, whereas Boot-It NG allowed me to boot right back into Windows.