Allocating unallocated space

I recently used Acronis True Image to restore my hard drive to a new, much bigger hard drive. Now there is a huge hunk of unallocated space. Will Acronis Disk Director allow me to increase the size of the two partitions on my drive?

 

SRC47:

Yes it will. For best results, make a bootable recovery CD and do the operations from the recovery CD when Windows is not running.

If you can post a screen shot of your disk layout from Windows Disk Management, along with a short description of what you want for the two partition sizes, then we can give you specific advice on how to accomplish this.

 

Here is a screen shot. What I want to do is divide the unallocated space between the two partitions

 

OK - thanks for posting the screen shot. I would proceed as follows:

1. Boot from the DD recovery CD and choose manual mode.
2. Right-click on your "New Volume" or E: partition and choose "Resize"
3. Click and drag in the center of the partition graphic to move the partition to the right. Move it until you have half of the unallocated space between C and E partitions.
4. Then drag the right border of the E partition to the right to make E larger until there is no more unallocated space to the right of E.
5. Choose "Commit" and verify that you have a larger E partition.
6. Right-click on the C partition and choose "Resize".
7. Drag the right border of the partition to the right until there is no more unallocated space between C and E partitions.
8. Choose "Commit" and verify that you have the desired outcome - two larger partitions and no free space.

Before doing this there are a couple of precautions. First, make sure that you have a current TrueImage backup just in case something goes wrong. Partition operations are supposed to be data safe but stuff happens. Second, give your two partitions meaningful names so that you can recognize them when booted to the recovery environment. They may get assigned different drive letters in the Linux recovery environment but will be correct when you go back into Windows. You just need to give them meaningful names so that they are easy to recognize.

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks for the info. Won't I be able to recognize the partitions by their size? Even though the are similar in size, there is adifference. How and when do I give them meaninful names? Is the recovery CD a Linux environment?

 

Yes; that's another way to keep them sorted.

You can right-click on a drive icon while using Windows Explorer and choose "Rename".

Yes, the recovery CD is Linux-based. When you create the recovery CD using the Bootable Media Builder application (on the Tools menu) you can also include the so-called "Safe" mode version, which is DOS-based. Since Acronis has not updated the Linux drivers on the recovery CD in some time, there may be a chance that the recovery CD will not be able to detect a SATA disk on some newer hardware. If this happens, try running the "Safe" mode version.