Resizing Partition Had No Effect

I used Disk Director Suite 10 to resize the 27.9 GB C: drive, so that I could create space for a new partition onto which I would install XP Pro (I have 98SE on the 27.9 GB drive). I went to create partition, did all the normal steps, picked active partition (second try i picked primary) but both times the computer restarted how I left it...with a 27.9 GB drive rather than a 13GB drive with 15 gb free space. what did I do wrong? Please don't tell me to buy a new computer.

alright, my bad. A quick search revealed that I need to use the rescue CD? I'll try it.

 

Yes, hopefully booting from the rescue cd and doing the procedure will work. For some reason, when started from Windows, DD won't actually apply the changes even though it gives no error messages and often says it completed successfully.

 

I appear to have the same problem. I attempt to resize a partition, it reboots and goes through the steps then reboots and appears to go through the same steps again except for a "assigning letters to drives" step and then reboots - all in about two minutes. When Vista comes up again, nothing has changed. If the solution is to use the rescue disk, what good is it to install the program in Windows?

 

This problem happens mostly when working on the same drive that contains the Windows installation. Having the program installed in Windows allows you to work with other internal drives as well as USB/FireWire drives and flash drives. Also some people (like myself) use the disk editor.

If some functions work better from the rescue cd then that's the way I'll do it. For example, when partitioning flash drives, Windows will only see the first partition. To work with additional partitions I have to boot from the rescue cd (into safe mode) so DD sees it as a hard drive and Windows doesn't get in the way.

 

OK so I booted from the rescue CD and resized my partitions and now Windows Vista is screwed up because the drive letters changed. How can I change them back to what they were before? I have a primary active partition that is my old XP partition that I upgraded to Vista with in a multi-boot configuration, a logical data partition and a primary partition with Vista on it. Before these were seen as drives D, E and C respectively. Now they are seen as D, C and E. The logical partition and the Vista partition have swapped drive letters and Vista boots but everything is screwed up.

 

After six hours of research and attempts, at 4:30 this morning I found a way to fix this.

Resizing the partitions so that the starting sector changes causes the disk signature (which depends on the starting sector number) to become invalid. When Vista recalculates the signature the drive letters are also reassigned. The solution is to get it to reassign the drive letters in the way I needed it to.

1. Boot with the DD10 rescue disk. Resize the data partition and Vista partition by moving the starting sector up so there is a little unallocated space before each partition.
2. Change the type of the partition of the data disk to unknown or some other partition type that Vista will not use.
3. Attempt to reboot Vista. You will get an error message that \windows\system32\winload.exe is missing or invalid. What this really means is that the disk signature is invalid and must be recomputed. (This was where I spent most of my time because I thought this message really meant what it said and I needed to changed the boot store somehow to make it find the file again).
4. Boot from your install DVD and choose Repair on the second screen. Allow Vista to repair the startup options. It will find that there is an error in the partition information and fix it (recompute the disk signature). When this is done, the Vista disk gets assigned the drive letter C since it can't use my old XP partition and can't see the data partition any more.
5. Reboot from your hard drive again and Vista will start up. The data partition is still missing because it is an unknown type.
6. Start up the DD10 installed on Vista and change the type of the data partition back to NTFS. Vista will assign the data partition drive letter E because C and D are already used.
7. Resize the data partition to use up the unallocated space. Do NOT resize the Vista partition or you will be right back where you started.
8. Restart Vista and everything is OK again.

I think this problem will only come up (and this will only work to fix it) when your disk layout is like mine - the partition order must be (1) old XP partition, (2) data partition, and (3) Vista partition. This is the only time where the Vista partition will get reassigned a new drive letter and screw up everything. If the order was XP, Vista, data the it would not happen.

Hopes this helps prevent someone else from having to go through this.

 

I too have this same problem only with the C:\ drive. I thought it was the drive and ran every test known to man. All is well. Tried resizing it several times thinking I was doing something wrong.

Using the bootable disc sounds like an idea. What really makes me angry if that is the case is that I recently spent the money to upgrade from PartitionExpert 2003. I never had this problem with the old version. Resized my system partition just like all the rest. So I popped another $30 to get less features and a crude way of simply resizing the OS partition?

Is this because DD10 is now Vista compatible?

 

I am having the exact same problem with Vista. I am very frustrated with this outcome. I also tried a recover CD but had no luck. I couldn't even get my mouse to work. Never had these problems with partition magic.

 

If you've tried the latest build of DD (2,160) in both full and safe modes and neither works, you may want to contact Acronis Support to resolve the problem.

If you just want to resize the Vista partition, you might try Vista's Disk Management program.

Another option is to create a BartPE cd that includes DD. That way it uses the standard Windows drivers instead of Linux/DOS drivers.