Partition manager programs?

I am about ready to resize my partitions on my desktop. My D drive is only 10 GB with the rest C drive. D drive is about full and I want to double its size. My hard drive is 250 GB. I was thinking of having the remainder as 70 gb C drive and the rest as the final drive. That would give me like 20 GB D drive, 70 GB C drive and whatever is left in the final drive.

Right now C drive shows 162 GB free of 222 GB. My main concern is just making D drive larger.

What programs are the easiest and most effective (screw up proof)? My OS is Vista Home Premium and I have noticed that many of the free partition manager programs are not yet Vista compatible.

 

For Vista, get Acronis Disk Director 10. Best price I found about 2 months ago was $34.99 at Newegg.

However, Costco has a package of True Image 11 and Disk Director 10 for about $44. If you are not a Costco member, I believe that the price would be about 5-10% more, still a good deal.

Do NOT use Partition Magic, does not work on Vista.

 

I would suggest that you be VERY VERY careful, and make sure you back up EVERYTHING that you would not be prepared to lose. I have resized partitions with various products, free and otherwise, and sometimes it worked without a hitch, but sometimes you're hosed and can lose it all. No matter what is suggested and which app you choose, just make sure you're prepared for disaster (save anything important first).

In the world of software, there is nothing that is 100% "screw up proof"...

Good luck...

 

Yes, one should always do image backups before a major event.
I oft do this more than once per day.

However, before repartitioning, you should use a good defrag program.
Perfect disk is as good as any.

However well intentioned, defragging is a task for which I would not use a free program.

FYI, ALL defragging programs worth using use the built-in MSFT DEFRAG API.
THe only differences amomg various defrag programs are:

1. The GUI.
2. Bells and whistles for scheduling, etc.
3. The algorithm(s) used to specify how the files are to be laid out.
4. Efficiency of implementation.

Unless you power down during a defrag, or some other software causes your system to get hung, requiring a reboot, it is allegedly impossible for things to go wrong using the MSFT Defrag API.

 

i would advice imaging C: to an external drive and also backing up all your data to the external drive. if possible.
you could use gparted which is a linux live cd.
or you could download a trial of paragon partition manager link
i have used paragon to resize my partitions in the past with no issues. i was only resizing C: to create a D:
C: was only windows and i had a backup of it

 

Thanks for all the very good info. I currently have Norton Ghost and am in the process of getting an external hard drive. The plan is to make an image of my C and D drive and save it on the external hard drive. Also, I plan on using the external drive for scheduled back ups. I would have gone with ATI but my computer has problems with Linux. I tried to use the Ubuntu disk in the past but kept getting an error message. So I wanted an image program that would have the boot disk in windows as opposed to Linux. And Ghost was on sale. Otherwise I would have went with SP.

 

I would not use ANY Linux program for this purpose until the Linux folkes summon the courage to include NTFS support within Linux itself.

 

I gave up on Ghost with version 10, too buggy.
In any case, Symantec software tends to be instrusive.
ShadowProtect is likely the better choice.

 

Ghost 12 is a very good app.
yes its slow loading and has an annoying popup from the tray icon when it starts a backup. but backups are fast and reliable. it has both imaging and file backup.
ghost is fine for most users.
yes there are better apps out there but none for as cheap,userfriendly and reliable.

 

It is my understanding that Ghost 12 still has the intrusive Norton Protection Center.

 

norton protection centre is only in NIS
norton ghost has its own tray icon with some annoying notifications but the GUI for ghost is acually quite nice.

 

Norton protection center was also in certain versions of NAV.
I last had NAV 2006.
My experience with Ghost 10, other than it was buggy, was that it was much faster than TI 9, but it did not do proper incremental backups.

 

woops i was trying to say that the protection centre hasnt been part of ghost.
ghost still has live update thou=(
ah i remember you posting about it not doin proper incremental images awhile back.
i never got ATI to work.
ghost 12 worked for me but as i said the norton naggness made me stick with what ive got.

 

If you have Vista, you don't need any 3rd party app. I used Disk Management to create, shrink and increase partitions just a few days back.

 

Partitition manager programs have additional capabilities.

 

A lot more capabilities, yes. If you need just plain 'ol bare bones, Veesta can work though.

 

Courage? It's more about time, you know, to disassemble what MS won't document etc etc.
But it is stable, with few well known issues.
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/
http://www.ntfs-3g.org/quality.html
Most distributions, if not all, have it available for some time now.

 

Yes, but there's those "few well known issues".

 

It's up to you to read on it and decide..

 

I will not risk file-system stuff.

 

I have used ntfs-3g here on both SUSE 11 and now Kubuntu 8.04 KDE4/Remix with absolutely no problems or issues. Works fine. Almost all distros nowadays read ntfs, that's standard. Ntfs-3g allows writing as well.

Btw, you risk your file system every day when you use Win and expose yourself to malware and viruses, so where is the logic in that?

A wise user always backs up anything of value, or makes images, etc, so that the risk is minimal, regardless of OS or installation.

 

Not fully.
When integrated into Linux, only then, might I take the risk.

Not relevant.

The risk is that a file system can get munged and you may not know until daze or weaks later, at which time you would not know which backup to use.

 

Where is Disk Management located (searched but could not find)? Also, do you know of a step by step guide? I have Vista Home Premium.

 

Right click "Computer" and select "Manage" from the menu. It will be located on the left column in the window that appears.


This may help->
http://www.theeldergeek.com/disk_management.htm

 

thanks