Moving space between partitions

Hi majorgeeks! I've run into a small problem. I am running out of room on my C drive. When I built my pc and installed windows 7, I stupidly assigned 60 gigs to my C, and then split the rest up between D, E, and F partitions. I'm not sure why I did it like this. But my C drive is now filling up and I was wondering if there was a way to take room from any other partitions and add it on to the C drive without reformatting my computer. Thank you!

 

Best tool is Partition Wizard. Delete or shrink the next partition and expand C into the space. I always recommend making a full disk image before repartitioning. If you are unlucky and end up with an unbootable computer or lost files you need a way back. Errors are rare but can happen.

 

Of course you could always move the (My) Documents, Pics, Music etc to another partition. The Properties of those folders have a Move tab and if you do it properly your other software will know where its files have gone. It's always been my preferred method, and 60GB will be just fine for your OS and software.

 

I do that as well. Its great knowing that your personal data resides elsewhere in the event Windows or your main drive dies.

 

Yeah, it also means you can image your OS in 15 minutes not having to include all your own stuff, and if you have to restore an image it won't affect your own stuff either, win win.

 

Hey thank you! What do you mean by disk image? Is that like as system restore? If I did have a problem rebooting, how could I salvage my files and revert back to before I repartitioned? Thanks!

 

A disk image is a snapshot of your hard disk in its entirety, whereas System Restore only backs up certain system files. I recommend you spend some time studying this tutorial which uses the free Macrium Reflect imaging program. If you go down this road be sure to create the free bootable rescue CD you need in order to be able to restore your image should the need arise. Also, whereas the tutorial is about backing up a single disk partition, you will need to select the whole disk for your image.

Quite apart from your present situation, regular use of such a program means you can always recover your system should it become seriously infected or develop other serious problems, including HDD failure. You will need an external drive or several DVDs to hold the image file.