create partition on c:

New user here.

I've searched the forums, but don't seem to find my issue.

I have just purchased DD. I downloaded the trial version first to see if it will help me do what I wanted. I also have True Image Home installed.

I created a CD and boot from it. My system currently has a 233G main partition (c: running XP SP2) and 7.3G of unallocated. The main partition has 157G of free space.

When I boot the full version it says it can't find any hard drives.

When I boot with the safe version it finds my hard drive, but says it's 233GB with 157GB free space. I then try to 'create partition' and select it to take it from 'free space' on c:. It then goes to 'analyzing c:' and comes up with the selector bar. The selector bar shows a minimum size of 7.383GB and a maximum size of 7.383GB. It's just letting me use the unallocated space.

I then try manual mode to resize the partition. However it brings up the Resize partition window and again won't let me change the partition size.

Any idea what is causing this? I have plenty of free space.

 

Welcome to the forum.

Are there any errors on the partition?

Are there any bad sectors on the partition?

Does DD show a little red "C" on the partition graphic?

Can you post a screenshot of what DD shows in Manual Mode for your drives?

 

When I first boot in safe mode on DD I see the C: drive with the used and free space I mentioned. Once I try a resize and then cancel because it won't let me make it smaller it comes back to the main window and then the red C does show up and it says 0 bytes of free space.

I'm not sure how to do a screenshot in boot safe mode.

 

I can get the images while running under windows that show the same thing.

I understand that I can't resize my primary OS partition while running the OS, but should give you what I'm seeing.

The first shot is what I see when I start DD (beginning screenshot). I then did a resize (still running under the OS) just to get it to show the red C that's the last screen shot. The middle screen shot is after I did a cancel on the resize. Notice now that the partition shows no free space and the C still is there.

 

I'm running checkdkk now, will let you know the results. I did defrag the drive a few days ago prior to even installing DD.

 

The unallocated space is only 7MB, not GB so it's only a tiny bit of space.

Wait and see what chkdsk says. Are you running chkdsk /f or chkdsk /r ?

If there are bad sectors on the partition, DD won't resize it.

 

Chkdsk is complete, I watched it get through step 4, stepped away on step 5 and when I came back I was at windows login. I started chkdsk via DD and checked the bottom one, I don't remember the words but it was the most exhaustive.

It looks like it's going to work now. I've set up my partitions successfully and now have an 'operation progress' window up. I changed my c: partition to 90GB so I suspect this will take awhile to move files around. Any idea how long I should expect it to take?

It's probably been going for 5 minutes with no bars in the current progress or the total progress windows.

 

Looks like I have bad blocks on the hard drive. Anything I can do short of reformatting?

 

Probably not if you want to use DD (I'm not sure if any other partitioning programs will work on partitions with bad sectors).

You would need to copy off the data (or create an image backup), delete the partition, recreate the partition (or restore the image backup using a slightly different size) and copy the data back. You'd also need to run chkdsk /r on the new partition to mark the bad sectors again.

 

Hello jbarnmn,

Thank you for your interesting in Acronis Products

You can download free trial version of Acronis True Image Home 2009 create image of the system and save it on external drive. Then boot from Acronis bootable disc and restore the system with resizing.

You should restore the image with resizing in order to bypass bad block indication using Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0. You can resize and relocate a partition by dragging it or its borders with a mouse or by entering corresponding values into the appropriate fields. Check user's guide chapter 6.3.8 "Changing the restored partition size and location" for more info http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/docs/

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev

 

I actually have purchased True Image Home as well. I will try that, but I've had a problem creating an image to my USB drive as well.

Thanks for the reply.