Repartitioning the Acer 8943g

Is there an easy way of repartitioning my hard drive so I have a 100gb storage partition? Right now I have 4 Primary partitions. 1/Recovery 2/Acer Arcade 3/Reserved 4/C drive. What I would like to do is shrink the C drive by 100gb and use that for the storage partition. I don't need the Acer Arcade 3.50 gb partition. The other 2 partitions are pretty well essential for the system to run and recover properly. I've told you what I want, 100gb storage partition, I just need to know the steps to getting it. Her is a picture of my hard disk the way it is now.

 

Basically you just need to do the following:

BACKUP All Data prior to any hard drive parititioning operation!!!

1. Resize your 577.90 GB NTFS C: paritition to the desired size (100 GB).
2. Create a new partition with the newly created "unpartitioned" disk space (~477 GB). Whether you create the new parition as an extended partition or primary partition probably does not matter. To make it simple just make it into another primary partition.
3. Format the newly created partition with the NTFS file system. I prefer to do a Full Format rather than a Quick Format. A Full Format takes a lot of time, but it also marks any bad disk sectors which may be found.

Next Question: What do I use to accomplish the above steps?

I am not a Windows 7 or Windows Vista user. According to the following article, you can do the partition resizing with Windows 7 or Windows Vista:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/resize-a-partition-for-free-in-windows-vista/

You may also accomplish the resizing with a bootable partitioning software such as:

1. Partition Wizard bootable CD (Freeware)
2. BootIt Next Generation or BootIt Bare Metal (Payware)
3. GParted (Freeware)

There are many other partition management software choices that will do the job.

Note: When you make a partition size such as 100 GB, the partition will show up in Windows Explorer as around 93 GB of formatted disk space. So if you want exactly 100 GB of formatted disk space for the C: partition you would resize the C: partition to about 107 GB.

 

You do know that you are only allowed 4 primary partitions right? The way you are describing this after I resized the Cdrive partition and created another one I would have 5 primaries which is a no no in Windows. If I'm wrong about that please let me know as this sounds very easy.

 

In that case, just use the newly created unpartitioned disk space and make an extended partition and add one or more (as desired) logical drives to the extended partition.

 

In reply to the last post I have finished doing the partitioning and I'm posting another screenshot or Snip if you will of what it now looks like. As you will see there is 3.50GB of unallocated space that is still left over from the Arcade Partition that I deleted. The question is: What should I do with that space, or should I just I just leave as is and if I do will there be a problem down the line having that space in the middle of the disk like that? I was wondering if all the partitions had to be in line w/o anything in the middle like it is right now. I just don't want to run into boot problems like I did before because I left something like that space w/o dealing with it. You know what I mean?

 

You can use a tool like BootIT BM (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal.htm) to "slide" the free space to another area of your disk where you can then add it to an existing partition. For example, in your screenshot below, you could slide the free space to right of your D: volume, then grow D: to incorporate the new space.

 

Is that a fairly simple process or is it going to require a bit of finesse? I don't mind telling you that this has already been somewhat of an adventure.

 

I know what you mean. You burn a CD from the download, boot from it, then you can slide the space down. Page 39 of the manual will walk you through it...the link is here: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/bootitbm_en_manual.pdf

Certainly don't do anything you aren't comfortable with, and as someone else on here said, backup your data before messing with partitions!

Good luck.

 

I went to take a look in the Manual from the link and I could probably figure it out once I went hands on and it's a lot less scarier once I have my disk image by Acronis done. You screw up, you fix it, no problem. First off though, I do have to make a new backup with where I'm at now. I went back to Easeus Partition Manager just to see what kind of option there was with that and alls it would give me when I clicked on the space was to recover the partition. Windows Disk Management gave me the option of creating a new simple volume with that space, but what do I do with the new volume once it's created? Can you move it an attach it somehow at the end of D? I might just be better off leaving the space as is unless there is an easier way someone can think of. By the way, that first software link wasn't freeware was it? Not that I could see anyway. Might be a bit expensive to worry about 3.5 GB.

 

You can move it to the end of your disk (after D: on your layout)...then use any tool to expand it...even Windows 7 native Disk Management will allow you to expand D: to consume the new space once you move it (it has to be after the partition you want to grow). BootIT BM will as well, as will Easeus, Paragon, etc. Don't create it into a new partition...move it as free space.

 

It's not freeware, but I believe the CD you create on the trial is fully functional.

 

Before I read your last post I got it done, exactly the way you just said in this post. I used Easeus and Hop Scotched the free space to the very end of D and then I just took the slider and moved it to consume the 3.5 GB free space. I'm adding a screen or snip to show you because I'm so happy this is done w/o any major hiccups. I got the info about moving the free space from a post on google. It took less than 10 mins. for the whole process to complete. Thank you for your time and patience helping me. It's guys like you and the other poster that make these forums work.

 

Great, glad to hear it! Happy to help.