Good Partition Managing Software

[Sir Topham Hatt]

I have an SSD, currently split into 3 partitions.

I want to shrink two and give the other one a bit of extra space.

This SSD holds the OS.

 

I also have a normal hard drive which I want to do the same with.

No OS on this one.

 

I tried Acronis as I had it installed, which failed to do anything but restart the PC.

Downloaded the free Pro trial of EaseUS Partition Manager, but that didn't get past the splash screen

I also tried the DM console in Win 7 but read that there are limitations (you can only merge to the allocated space to the right?) and it just hung when I asked it to split one volume.

 

Any pointers?

[Sir Topham Hatt]

Here's a screenshot:

 

 

What I want to do is:

 

DISK 1 (SSD):

Add Local Volume J to Local Volume C.

Split Local Volume E down to 120Gb, add the remaining to Local Volume C.

 

DISK 2 (HDD):

Add Local Volume K to My Libraries D.

Add Unallocated 2Gb to My Libraries D.

 

However Acronis won't allow me to merge those two together.

 

Read about gParted and managed to boot into that but moving the partition wasn't as easy as I thought.

 

I do have a spare 1TB drive so for the latter HDD, I could copy all the data from G and H to it, then merge the whole lot together in one partition.  Then split it into the three but it's a lot of work waiting for stuff to copy.

 

I guess the same could be done with the SSD as when Windows 10 comes out, I won't have anything on the E or F drives.

 

But then again, I am learning new things with new programs.

 

Why is it Windows won't allow you to merge to the left?

[TPreston]

Don't do this from within the os, Use a solution that has a bootable (preferably windows pe based) solution.

[Sir Topham Hatt]

That's what I had Gparted for so it was outside of the Windows solution.

 

However I now  understand what the internet is saying on how you can do it using Acronis (or others).

 

Basically, you have to shrink the partition and state you don't want any unallocated space after it.  Then it'll move it over to the end of the hard drive.  Gparted probably can do this but it's a little harder to understand from the program that runs.

 

The only data I need is on the My Libraries, which shouldn't be touched as I'll only be adding space to it and the C:\ drive, which again shouldn't be touched as it'll only have more space added to it.

The G and H drives I'll back up onto the external anyway just in case and I'll take a backup of the Libraries as it'll then be done for the transition to Win 10.

 

I didn't really understand about the dragging the partitions into the allocated space.

[+BudMan MVC]

"I want to shrink two and give the other one a bit of extra space."

 

This is problem with partitioning up your drive.. Might I ask why you have so many??  Really you should have 1 on each drive (other than your OS drive that would have the system reserved part) and use folders to contain your different stuff..  What do you think splitting up a 500GB drive into 4 parts gets you other than extra work?

 

As to tool can do this.. Both of the tools you stated already can do it with ease.. You have something wrong if they are not running.

 

Please very curious why you think this setup is worth anything..  It gets you nothing but grief!!  Like finding a tool to change it..  What I would do is delete all the partitions to the right of first one, in the case of your ssd the second one and then expand to fill the drive.  There you go problem solved using OS tools.

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

I can understand why you might have two partitions on your first hard drive, so you can format, re install Windows and still keep data on it, However having a total of 8 NTFS partitions across two drives just seems mad.

 

Why not just create folders in the root of each drive for various things? you wouldn't need to worry about re partitioning then if you wanted to allocate more space to games for example.

[+BudMan MVC]

"re install Windows and still keep data on it,"

 

I really don't buy this reasoning honestly either.  What is on his OS drive that would be needed to be saved?  Wouldn't that be in his backup?  All critical files should be backed up..  Keeping a 2nd partition so that you can format and reinstall the OS doesn't make any sense if you have a valid backup plan.

 

I could wipe my whole system both disks and while would not be something I would just do for the fun of it.. I would not loose anything of importance..  So in a worse case scenario my ssd decided well today is the day and just quit..  I would just pop in a new one and install os and my programs and move on.  So for example w10 is coming, and will be installing that -- and when new OSes come out I like to start clean slate, there is nothing on my ssd that I could just not do that right now.

 

There really is no point to multiple partitions in a home machine today.  If you had multiple users that were sharing a machine and disk, say siblings and there were to have specific % of the drive and you want to make it fair.. Ok give them their own partition

 

Booting other OSes - that would be a valid reason.. Running windows with ntfs and want to run linux etc and give it its own file system.  That would be valid reason.. But really today how often do you do that - just run your 2nd or 3rd or 4os in a VM

 

Recovery or special parts make sense.. But from a user perspective I just don't see a reason which is why would love to understand the OP logic in having so many and what they believe it gets them.  That simple folder structure does not do?

[Jason S. Global Moderator]

we use Partition Wizard here at work. It works quite well.

 

http://www.partitionwizard.com/

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

I agree, however by that i mean the drive is quite large at 500gb for just Windows / Apps, so rather than wipe out all the Steam downloads that then have to be restored from a backup, or re-downloaded, it would be more convenient / a time saver just to wipe the Windows partition. I also only have one partition per drive too, however that is something I can see the reasoning for if the OS drive is large enough. It goes without saying everything important should be backed up else where / offsite.

[+BudMan MVC]

well 500GB is not all that large in todays standards.. And if ssd could have 10% or more of or so unallocated over provisioning.  Depending on what games you run, some these days can use up large amounts of space... If working with large files for video editing, etc. those scratch files while working on them could use up big chunks and speed would want to be on your ssd, etc.

 

But sure ok if you didn't have another disk and just a SSD then ok create OS and data partitions on it - but he has another disk that should/could be just his data disk so that leaves the SSD open for just OS and working files, etc..

 

We are in agreement that the OP sort of partitioning scheme makes little sense

[James035]

If you didn't get past the splash screen, may be related to your firewall, try to turn off the firewall and do it again.

[T3X4S]

Somebody went partition happy - I dont want to use the words "dumb", or "pointless", so I'll say silly.

If you dont want to use the boot method, the MiniTools Partition Mgr 9 is free and same GUI as Acronis...

[Sir Topham Hatt]

Ha ha, thanks for the interesting replies.

 

My hard drives aren't usually like that.  I did have:

 

Windows / Programs / Games as seperate partitions on one drive (the SSD)

Documents / "Working, Stuff to Do" / Archive (files to be transferred elsewhere) on the other drive.

 

I found it easy to work with different drives so I can click on "Computer" and navigate to a program directory straight away, or a game directory if I need to add mods manually.

However, I ended up like that in an effort to slim down some partitions and add the unallocated space to others, so it's very much a WIP until I found out how to move the partitions over to the right hand side so the left partitions can be merged with the spare unallocated space.

 

As I'm going to be installing most programs on the SSD in C, then I want to increase that partition size but can only do that by re-aligning the E and F drive as far right as possible.  Thus the freshly created J drive can then be merged with C giving me the extra space I need.

[+BudMan MVC]

Or just by a new drive - 500GB hd is SMALL, you can pickup a 1TB external for nothing.. Move all your files off.. wipe the thing create the partition or partitions how you like and then move your files back.. This 1TB is now a place for backups, etc.

 

Shrinking and moving partitions seems like the very long road to a very simple problem.

 

$60 and your done and have a backup drive..

http://www.amazon.com/Passport-Ultra-Portable-External-Backup/dp/B00EAS8KSW/ref=zg_bs_595048_8

 

500GB HDD these days is really small dude...  Why would you would be messing with moving around partitions is nuts.  Sounds like don't have enough space to begin with if you can not delete a partition and expand and or move.. Shouldn't have to do it multiple times.

 

Or just get a internal larger disk.. Partition it how you want, and then throw out your 500gb its prob quite old is not.. I can not see anyone buying such a small disk other than SSD in the last few years.

[PaulATMOS]

I use Paragon Hard Disk Manager. Fully functional trial version available. You can arrange the partition size from within Windows and then the computer will reboot into a PE where the changes are applied. There are also Linux and Windows PE Boot disks where you can bypass Windows altogether. But as others have said, If Acronis and EaseUS software is not working, something is wrong with the way you're doing it.

[Sir Topham Hatt]

It's not the size that's the problem.

I don't need to spend money on bigger hard drives as I have an external 1Tb drive hanging around doing nothing but I am happy with the 1Tb I already have.

 

The problem is getting what was unallocated space on the very right hand side of the picture to merge with disk K, then merge all of that with D to make D bigger.

 

Take a look at my second post again.

The second drive... the unallocated space cannot be merged with the K drive as the H drive is in the way.

The K drive cannot be merged with the D drive because G is in the way.

 

Windows doesn't allow you to merge unallocated spaces without reallocating the whole drive, so the Storage (G) and Archive (H) have had to be extended, then shrunk like a caterpillar into the empty spaces so I could combine D with the empty space.

 

I guess when I split the G drive, I should have made sure the empty space was at the beginning rather than at the end so it could have merged with the D drive easily.  I thought Windows would have allowed you to grab any space and merge it with any other space on the disk, irrespective of it's position.

 

However, after all the moving and merging, I now have what I set out to have:

 

 

This means I can install most programs on the Windows © drive and have more space for Documents on the D drive.