partition help

I have a 160G harddrive in a dell laptop with dual boot. Drive C: is Vista 40G and drive D: is xp 120G. I need more space in Vista, so I would like to move some space from xp to vista. No space is currently unallocated. I have gparted and parted magic. Both use similar actions, but I need a step by step to avoid catastrophy in the resize action. I have had no reply from the partition forums, and their instructions don't specifiaclly address this question, so I hope to get help here.
Thanks

 

i've recently done this with Easeus partition manager from within windows (it's free for 32 bit systems). Using it from within windows helps to make sure that you won't do anything, like shrink the c: even more. It was pretty simple to do. Just reduce the size of d: to whatever you want, and increase c: to the leftover space, hit apply, and windows will reboot and apply the changes. As always there is some inherited risk when doing any kind of tinkering with hard drives, and it's always safe to back up any important data.

 

Please be aware that all files/OSes etc on a hard drive use up space from the lowest sector available in the partition first. Thus the XP data (all of it) would probably have to be shunted around the hard drive to accomplish the resize.

Therefore I would recommend purchasing a program like Acronis TrueImage, taking a full hard drive backup, then wiping the XP partition, then resize the Vista partition, then use Acronis to replace XP in the new partition.

 

Thanks for the replies. It seems to me that if I resize D: from 100g to 80G, then it leaves 20G of unallocated space to the right of D: Doesn't this space have to be to the right of C: anfd between C: and D: in order to increase the size of C:? If so, how do I get it there?

 

Try Paragon Partition manager

 

why don't you do as Collins suggested .? its by far the most straightforward way.
Use Nortons Ghost or Acronis trueimage and clone your drive over onto another hard drive. Any 3.5" or 2.5" will do.
Then repartition your existing drive the way you want it and ghost your cloned images back onto your old drive ?

Alternatively If you purchase a USB 2.5"/3.5" adaptor cable (10$) you could attach your laptop drive to any PC and back up everything onto the PC then copy it back when your laptop drive is repartitioned . Simples