In the laptop is a 500g spinning drive. I want to make a 85g Primary partition for eventual Windows10, and later add 3 Linux partitions. M: is for data only, but there's some data on C: as well. How can I change part of the extended green to be primary? Disk management talks of Simple partition. I tried it, but it was within that extended space next to M:, and I saw no way to make it primary, or dark blue like Windows7. I have images of the three partitions. Actually there was once here some recovery 12gig Primary partition, I got rid of it (it landed in extended green area). I rely on Acronis to restore those three. I probably don't need that system_DRV either but it has some boot stuff in it. If I have to move M:, is no problem. I have additional Syncback free backups done on it. Is there anything I missed in this description for someone to be able to suggest a good and easy path?
act8192, Disk Management won't do this. I'd use BootIt Bare Metal to resize the extended partition to 100.34 GB or a larger size. Then you will be able to create a primary partition in the free space as the free space will be outside the extended partition.
I'm still figuring out what I really want to do. Thanks for your answer. I looked at BootIt... and then it accured to me that I have a live Linux Mint, a booting DVD. I wonder if I can do the partition fixing by gparted or maybe even Acronis that I have. Then there's more to think about - the whole dual booting setup for Win7 and 10 and adding Mint. My head hurts because I can't quite figure out a good procedure. I'll be back for more advice.
Ah, multi-booting. That's where BIBM is outstanding. Unlike a Microsoft multi-boot where you are limited to a few OS with the booting files from each OS located in a shared System partition, BIBM allows you to have up to 200 OS per drive with each OS independent of the others. There is no shared partition for booting files so there are no issues if you decide to delete an OS. BIBM creates a special MBR that allows 200 primary partitions per drive, not just 4 primary partitions as with a standard MBR. I haven't used gparted lately but it should be able to cope with your Extended partition resizing.
gparted from Linux Mint 17.2 Live USB-flash did the job well beyond my expectations. It was cute when every change I made, slowly, step by step, was followed by Windows7 running chkdsk as I booted to see if I'm still alive. I changed lots of things and currently Win7(shrinked) and Win10 dual boot, and I have tons of space in the expanded logical area for Linux, more data, etc. BIBM is so full of features that it scared me. Also I rely on Acronis which handles MBR rescue well, so I'd be scared with doing BIBM type MBR which Acronis might not like. And of course not yet sure if Mint's grub won't mess things up (v13 Mint didn't mess up in XP) Thanks for your help and pointing me in the right direction
