Yet another Partition thread

[crispy1995]

I am trying to partition my hard drive. Computer Manangement in Win Xp will only let me partition Unallocated space 2.73 Gb out of 78 GB. The unallocated space was the System Sav drive that came with the computer, which I deleted. Now, I have only a measly amount of space to partition. Can I resize this unallocated space (to make a decent size partition) without buying third-party products with the money I don't have?

 

[Cromewell]

You can use GParted, it's free. Resizing partitions usually works but you should backup anything you don't want to lose anyway. You can only resize paritions on dynamic volumes using the disk management snap-in.

 

[PC eye]

Resizing the primary there should go smooth without a hitch using GParted. I just took a Vista 238gb primary and shrunk that down to 157gb and later brought it back upto the full 238gb without a loss of anything. The small amount of drive space is far less. I've also rezied XP partitions as well and haven't run into problems. But I run multiple drives that are constantly seeing files backed up between them.

 

[crispy1995]

How exactly do I download it? Do I take the installation files and just drag and drop them onto a CD-R? Thanks

 

[bullzeye2005]

Here is a link to download GParted.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=173828

You need to have a 3rd party burning software and download GParted ISO. ISO is a bootable format. Nero is by far one of the best, but you can also use Sonic or any other burning software that supports the burning of ISOs. Once you have downloaded it and burned it to a cd you now need to boot to it. Once booted to this program you can change / add partitions to your liking.

This program works great. I have used this program to create a partition to dual boot vista and xp and works flawlessly.

 

[PC eye]

Besides simply burning anu iso image to disk and ending up with a data and not bootable burn you will want one good for making bootable cds with any Linux iso image. The one proven the best here for burning the 35mb iso image for GParted to disk has been BurnOn found free at http://www.burnworld.com/burnoncddvd/

When going to download GParted take note on the number and don't simply go after the latest or you will face another problem. For Windows and especially non Linux users the 0.3.3.0 was the last "Platform Indeoendent" release found there. When you click the plus sign on the left side as you scroll down several releases you will find a large gap between this one and the earlier releases.

 

[crispy1995]

I burned the file to a CD-R using BurnOn CD&DVD as well as the Windows utility, but it will not boot. Is there a setting or another file I am missing? Pardon my stupidity.

If there is a walkthrough website, I would appreciate the link.

 

[Cromewell]

Some BIOSs require you press a key to boot from CD, also make sure the CD/DVD drive is before the hard drive in the boot order in the BIOS.

 

[PC eye]

In order to force boot from an optical drive you would have to temporarily disable any other boot drives and set the cd rom option as the first. And you still have to press a key within so many seconds then or see the "failure to locate boot device" type error message come up.

Here there's an F* boot device option seen on the first post screen next to the "press DEL now to enter bios setup" option. You simply select the floppy, hard drive. or cd/dvd drive to boot from and that works without a boot order change. You could wish more boards saw this available however.