Invalid partition size - what worked for me

I see from threads here that many have experienced this problem and no one has posted a solution. After trying many different approaches I was finally able to get my two partitions to resize by first defragging the C: partition. This, even though XP reported that the C: partition did not need to be defragged.

BACKGROUND
About a year ago I installed DiskDirectorSuite10.0.2117 and set up two partitions on my Dell notebook HD. DiskDirector worked perfectly for this. Yesterday I used TrueImage to clone my HD to a new larger, faster HD. I was not able to get the manual sizing in TrueImage to work so I opted for automatic, figuring I could just resize the partitions with DiskDirector. Right! Attempt after attempt failed with the "Invalid partition size" error. DiskDirector would just stop at that point and I would have to power the Dell down and reboot. Fortunately it returned everything to the original state upon restart. I upgraded to DiskDirector build 2160 hoping it would correct this problem but it did not. What was interesting to me was that DiskDirector had worked properly on this PC before, except of course I now have a different HD. So either there is something with the new drive, or a setting somewhere deep in XP was causing my problem? One possible reason: months ago (but after the orginal split to two partitions) I used TuneXP to "rearrange the boot files for ultrafast booting". Perhaps this somehow prevents DiskDirector from resizing? At any rate, as I noted, after defragging the C: partition the resize worked perfectly. Hopefully this will save someone else too.

Jerry