Trying to re-organise Laptop HD

Before I head for disaster land I just want check that what I propose will work.

I have got the partitions on my laptop in the wrong order and sizes and now realise that I should have created an extended partition rather than creating primaries so that I now have empty partitions I cannot use. So I have backed up the complete disk using Macrium and propose reformatting the disk and placing the partitions as I wish.

Next install Win 8 so that the recovery partition is created correctly.

Then using Macrium from my PC (where the image is stored, Win 8.1) restore the various images individually to what will be different sized partitions.

Do you think this scheme will work correctly?

Thanks

 

I personally would just backup my personal files, then partition the disk when installing Windows 8. Once you got the os installed, just restore your files. Also, what partitions do you have that they have to be arranged specifically? On my laptop, I have the 100mb partition windows creates, a 120gb boot partition, and the last partition fills the rest of the disk and is used for my files.

 

David,

I've never reformatted. Ever.

Can you post a screenshot of Disk Management and we'll see if there is an easy way out.

 

Thanks for the replies.

I have spent a time getting 8.1 to work the way I want it so would prefer to restore the image.

The Windows partition has got itself into the middle of the disk. Not sure how that came about but that is the way win installed. At the time I was trying not to overwrite the recovery drive but that has now gone. The only way I see now is to reformat the drive and create the partitions before installing anything.

 

Easy to fix but I'll need to see Disk Management.

 

Thanks Brian

Got to be out on site today so will have to look at it this evening.

 

David, long evening?

 

Hi Brian

Sorry for the delay.

Too tired when I got back and thought you would not be around the next morning - being the other end of the globe. So thought I would see how I would get on which was not that well which bore out my doubts.

The problem I foresaw was that Windows had installed itself ahead of the first partition and then put its restore partition ahead of itself. When I came to restore the image to the beginning of the disk using Macrium, it seemed to work ok but on booting it ended up with a grey screen. Could summon task manager but not achieve anything with the options.

Then booted from the Win disk and chose repair which installed a fresh copy of Windows. Annoying but at least in the right place. There was nothing important on the image so was just a case of re-installing the programs. Probably would have been easier to do that in the first place.

Anyway - thanks for your offer of help. Don't know if you would have had an easier way of doing this.

 

David,

I would have done the entire procedure without using images. Just sliding and resizing partitions.

 

Ok - I see. Will bear that in mind for the future.

I think though that I had got the disk structure in a mess with having too many primaries and since this is on a friends machine it was probably better that I did what I understood and not leave him with potential problems when he is away.

Thanks for the offer.