Enlarge HDD Partition?

[Paul Komski]

Windows ME with 20G SeagateEIDE HDD in two partitions. C: = Primary/18G(13G free) D: = Secondary/2G(almost full). I use the D: drive for data and would like to double its size to 4G.

What is the best way to go about this. I can back-up D: onto 3 or 4 CDRW if necessary but would like to avoid reinstalling the OS if possible. Ideally I would like to end up with 3 partitions of 7G(primary), 6G and 6G.

Any help in this would be much appreciated. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif

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Take nice care of yourselves - Paul
"There are old pilots and bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots."

[Rick]

Look around for a program called Partition magic or one like it.
It will allow you to change the partition size without a reinstall

[Paul Komski]

Thanks Rick I've actually got Partition Magic on the way so I'll try it out when I've got it.

Just for information: would it be possible to use FDisk (from an ME startup disk) to do this? Or would one lose the data on one or both partitions? http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/tongue.gif

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Take nice care of yourselves - Paul
"There are old pilots and bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots."

[Rick]

If you use Fdisk it will destroy your old partition and all data will be lost

[Paul Komski]

OK; Got PM 7.0 installed. I am new to partitioning/dual-booting so please bear with me.

First thing I tried to do was to reduce the size of C: to 7MB (D: would have increased proportionately). All seemed straightforward but at the end I got this warning.

"One or more of the changes you have made require going to DOS mode. If you press OK your computer will restart in DOS mode, complete the changes, and then restart windows."

(1) Since I am running ME I wondered if the computer could restart in DOS mode and so I clicked Cancel. Does anyone know if it would have been alright to have clicked OK and proceded to make the change?

(2) There was also another warning in the readme notes about reducing the size of the active primary partition containg an OS on a FAT partition. This said if the computer failed to reboot then to run sys.com from a command prompt. Don't know if this is relevant, since the partition is FAT32, and I presume that if this happened one would do this from an ME startup disk.

TIA Paul



[This message has been edited by Paul Komski (edited 03-23-2002).]

[Rick]

Someone who uses Win ME will have to answer the first part about booting to dos.

The second is easy.
Create a boot disk using me create a boot disk if you don’t already have one.
Make sure that sys.com is on the disk.

Sys is a dos command that will copy the system files onto your hard drive again . (io.sys msdos.sys and command.com) or the ME version of these files
Making the c: drive boot able again

[mjc]

Do you have the option of running PM in DOS from the beginning?

If so try booting with a Win98 bootdisk and running PM from there, that will put you in DOS.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[Paul Komski]

Thanks Rick. Those 3 sys files exist in the ME windows folder so I expect everything would work OK. I'm just being ultra-cautious, since I only have access to my main PC at the moment and I am in the middle of a lot of work and can't afford to screw things up - (even though all my data is backed up on CDs and I have a startup disk for ME).

Someone who has done this from ME will hopefully confirm I can proceed.

[Paul Komski]

mjc Will have to look into that. PM is completely new to me. If this is gonna be problematic I will wait until I have a backup pc to hand. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif

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Take nice care of yourselves - Paul
"There are old pilots and bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots."

[Paul Komski]

Read through all PM manual and couldn't find any specific ME+DOS warnings. Decided against running from floppy coz no undos. Just made sure no A/V etc or TSR progs in background. Ran msconfig with no startup items and went ahead with resizing. Worked just fine; took about 30 mins. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

Next task to create new partition. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

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Take nice care of yourselves - Paul
"There are old pilots and bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots."