Resizing partitions??

Hi all, here is my situation. I have a 160gb hard drive that is split between Windows 7 (120gb) and XP (40gb).
I've recently picked up a few games that are not Windows 7 compatible.
Since I'm starting to run out of space on the XP side and have plenty of room on the 7 partition, is there a way to change the sizes, without losing anything? If so, how would I do it?
TIA!

 

Usually, I would recommend Partition Wizard to change partition sizes and it says it is Win7 compatible. My hesitation is that I have read somewhere that Win7 has some tie to the original partition size and it could cause problems with licensing if you use third party software to make a change. I'm unsure if this has been corrected since I read about it over a year ago.

So, I would recommend using Win7's built in partition utility in Disk Management to avoid conflict. I'm not that familiar with it but a quick look seems to indicate it would be two resizing operations.

1) Type Disk Management in the Start>search box and select Create and Format partitions from the list
2) In the window that opens right click your Win7 partition and select Shrink
3) Choose the new size and follow prompts (probably have to restart)
4) After restart you should have unallocatted space between the Win7 and XP partitions and if you right-click the XP partition in Disk Management should be able to choose to expand it into the unallocated space. *Or you could use Partition Wizard to expand it into the unallocated space. PW is definitely safe for resizing an XP partition.
5) I would then use a good defragmentation program on the XP partition to see if it moves the system files into the empty space at the beginning of the newly sized partition for efficiency.

Again, I'm unsure that you have to use Windows built in partition utility on the Win7 partition but I, personally, would be using it on that part until I hear someone with personal experience having used a different partition program on a Win7 boot partition with no problems.

 

To follow up: I've actually performed the Win 7 'shrinking' routine on a couple of OEM machines (which tend to come from the factory with split disks), and the procedure worked flawlessly.

I did find, however, different results within the query portion of the routine, ostensibly caused by file fragments and fragmentation. So, I'd advise running a good drive cleaner and a good defrag routine before starting the resizing process.

 

For safety / security purposes, you might want to make an image backup before resizing. :major

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Hi Caliban

I found my computer took a good five minutes during the query portion of the process--I thought it had hung up. That was my guess it was either doing a chkdsk or defrag while I was waiting. Running a defrag before the process would certainly make sense.

 

Hey, sach2.

Yep - found out the hard way. From what I've read, by definition the query process is going to go through extensive variables to determine the proper disk size to report, and some of the query commands involve CRC and other redundancy checks - guess it has to decide which blocks are usable, which are off limits, yada yada.

If the process has to sort through a bunch of fragged blocks, 'headless chickens' (orphaned files) and empty space, then it will take much longer, especially with today's super-large drives.

Simple.