BleepingComputer.com: Resize i.e. Increase size of Root Parition/Drive

Hi,

I am running Windows XP Pro 32 bit SP3. My HDD is partitioned into 3 partitions, all under Windows XP i.e. C, D and E drives. My C Drive i.e. my root drive is getting full. (It is of 40 GB and has a few hundred MB remaining.) The other drives have at least 50% free.

I have resized partitions on Windows Vista using GParted (on the Linux live CD). I am wondering if anyone knows if this would work on the root partition. Feel free to suggest other tools that are more well known or work well. I intend to do this over this weekend if possible.

Thanks to you guys,
O. O.

First, the correct terminology is "system partition" not "root partition". And yes, you can do what you want using a third party app such as GParted. But as is always the case when performing any drive level function you should make sure all critical data is backed up just in case there is some problem during the operation.

Thank you Allan for replying. I thought that I would reply to this thread after resizing, but it so happened that my Hard Drive got hosed, and I spent a week trying to fix it.

For those who are attempting to resizing of the System Partition like I have, in addition to backing up your data like Allan suggested, ensure:

1. You Defrag all your partitions
2. Run chkdsk before and after each step i.e. If your resize operation is multiple steps (which it most probably would be) e.g. to increase the size of one partition you would have to either delete or shrink another partition. Each of this is a separate step.
3. Try to not use fixmbr/fixboot if you can avoid it: I had a bad experience with fixmbr/fixboot I am not sure which one did the mess since I ran them consequently – but after I ran them my system partition seemed to be formatted in FAT16 and limited to 16 MB. I attempted to use TestDisk (also on the Gparted CD) to get my original partition back, but I think it was too late.

Thanks to all you guys,
O. O.

FWIW: Fixboot and fixmbr commands are useful to many users of XP with standard boot files/sectors. To my knowledge, the only instance of these commands possibly causing problems on a drive...occur when dealing with nonstandard MBR setups (such as on a Dell system).

Black Screen (fixmbr) - http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;314503

Dells and Fixmbr Command - http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/software-os/f/3524/p/19304465/19589396.aspx

Louis