I was wondering if there was any way to change a partition on a single HDD and not lose any data?

I have a 300GB HDD with a 20GB partition for my operating system. I just upgraded to Vista and now that 20GB is almost maxed out.

I think I'm screwed but who knows. Maybe you know something I don't.

There are several commercial products which will allow you to change the size of a partion. (Partition magic is the first one that comes to mind).

Your best bet though is to download a "live" Linux distribution like Ubuntu which will boot from cd and allow you to run gparted.

Just make sure you do a bit of research first though to make sure you're using it properly or you might lose all of your information.

Vista has it's own built in resizing tool. Extremely easy to use (it's just run through the disk management console). The quick steps are as follows:

1 - Click on the Start Button and right click on Computer and select Manage.

2 - Expand the Storage section and select Disk Management.

3 - Then just right click on any partition and select either Expand or Shrink to change the size of the partition.

If you have already partitioned all of your hard drive space, you will need to shrink the size of your non-os partition and then increase the size of the partition your os is installed on.

If I'm not clear in this let me know.

EDIT: Here is a website that explains it better and has pictures (me likes pictures)

http://www.pronetworks.org/forum/viewstory.php?t=78111

I never knew that Matt, thanks for the tip!

No worries dude. I've done it a number of times on different Vista machines here at work (test machines only - not going live for a LOOOOOOOOONG time) and it has worked flawlessly for me.

Makes me think M$ bought out Partition Magic or something (since it actually works I doubt they made it lol)

Wait for it, they'll break it

Matt,
After going to the page you indicated, I performed all the steps but ran into a problem. There's never an option to expand my primary partition (C:). If you scroll to the bottom of that page, another poster has the same problem but there was no solution posted.

Try using this tool then (still built into Vista)

http://vistarewired.com/2007/04/07/how-to-work-with-partitions-in-windows-vista-xp-when-disk-management-doesnt-work/

Did you try making the other partition smaller first?

I don't run Vista so I can't offer any help with the built in partition manager.

Interesting thing about diskpart (I should state that I have never used it but plan on messing with it on a virtual machine that I will setup today) is that it is built in XP pro as well. It may be in the home edition but I don't know for sure.

Matt

Here is the info on Diskpart from MS

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/diskpart.mspx?mfr=true

Well it didn't seem to work in XP for me. Theres a shock

*sigh* Diskpart didn't work either. I can shrink my D drive and then create a new one but I can shrink D and then increase the size of C. It just says that there is not enough space even though I just freed up 20GB using Diskpart.

Oh well. Could I do this with Partition Magic and not lose any of my data?

I've personally not had great experience with Partition magic (lost tons o data), but it has worked for me on occasion as well.

gparted from a live linux distro then.

That way the HDD isn't in use at all and can't interfere with the resize.