Extending system volume

[PaulB]

I would like to extend the Windows 7 system partition into the adjacent unallocated disk space but the option to extend is grayed out. Does this mean that I cannot do this, or am I not going about it the right way?

DM.JPG

[Bigaldoc]

I haven't done any partition stuff in Win7 yet, Paul, and I've always used a 3rd party app when I do that kind of stuff.

So, I can only tell you that in my (non-Win7) experience you can't "extend" a partition unless the empty space is to the right. Don't ask me why but as far as I can remember it always been that way. In the products I've used you first have to do some "moving" around until you get the empty space to the right, then you can extend.

Whatever, be sure you backup first. Sorry, I know you of all people know that. Good luck.

[PaulB]

Thanks, Al. OK, now where did I put Plan "B"?

[John Gray]

Paul, you could do it with any of the partition managers and disk imagers (the free ones, or maybe even their 30-day trials, when available) having booted from their respective "rescue" CD.
But just to get another 101 MB - is it worth the bother? Your C: drive would go from 301.40 GB to 301.50 GB...

[tedshemyers]

I have found that Win 7 Disk Manager is somewhat limited. It can generally entend behind the OS drive, but not in front of the OS Drive. Use a 3rd party app such as Partition Wizard to accomplish this. Worked great for me.

[PaulB]

... is it worth the bother?

I guess it all comes down to how anal I want to be... especially since that 301.50 GB drive would then be 74% free space!

Seriously, my intent is to shrink the OS volume and at the same time move it to the beginning of the disk. I want to then extend the data partition to take up the resulting unallocated space. I will check out the partition manager packages.

Any thoughts or advice appreciated.

Thanks all.

[John Gray]

I've had good results from Easeus Partition Master before. It still seems to be free!

[BobArch2]

I would like to extend the Windows 7 system partition into the adjacent unallocated disk space but the option to extend is grayed out. Does this mean that I cannot do this, or am I not going about it the right way?

Is it possible that the 101MB unallocated space was once the System Reserved partition that was "played-with".? My Win 7 environment still shows the System Reserved partition as the leading item taking 100mb. If it was the System Reserved partition at one point then it might be difficult if not impossible to reallocate without performing a complete reformat and re-install.

[PaulB]

You're right, Bob. That was the SR partition. I came across a tutorial on how to remove it and, ever the tinkerer, decided to do just that. I thought that it would be a good idea to reclaim that space and at the same time shrink an over-sized system partition. It's turning out to be a nontrivial task to reclaim the space and Windows tells me that I cannot shrink the system partition at all.

I'm glad you showed up. Do you think I could use ShadowProtect recovery environment to accomplish the above? I've read the documentation but it does not seem to address my specific concerns and, frankly, I find it very difficult to understand.

[BobArch2]

You're right, Bob. That was the SR partition.... [stuff deleted] Do you think I could use ShadowProtect recovery environment to accomplish the above?

Just to clarify... do you mean you would like the SP Recovery CD/DVD to restore the deleted SR partition OR to overlay the SR partition with your system partition (C:)?

Of course to restore the SR partition would mean you would have had to back it up at some point and still have that back-up available... in which case you should be able to do that.

If meaning that you want the SP Recovery CD/DVD to overlay the old 101MB SR partition with the system partition (C:) then I'm not sure if that can be done. I'll do some more checking on this concept.

[BobArch2]

You're right, Bob. That was the SR partition... [stuff deleted] Do you think I could use ShadowProtect recovery environment to accomplish the above?

OK Paul, did some more research.

First off, found two links that provide more insight to the Windows 7 System Reserved partition. A read of the material shown in Link #1 and Link #2 sheds more light on the situation.

The bottom-line being that the System Reserved partition cannot be removed, once installed, without a complete reformat and re-partition. The 2nd link provides a work around to ensure that you start off with a single partition that can be used to install Windows 7 without the SR. And yes, I realize that you found a work-around that basically crippled the SR and allows booting from C:. But, that work-around leaves the 100MB SR as unallocated space... which cannot be freed up without the reformat/re-partition.

Now if you have a ShadowProtect backup of your original drive C:, you could restore that to a newly reformatted/partitioned drive making the restored drive active and containing the MBR.

I noticed from your snapshot that you also have your Data contained on the same physical, but different logical, drive. Before starting any processes, I would certainly advise backing up your information to an external hard drive to help if any glitches occur.

Aside from the above... my real recommendation is to leave-sleeping-dogs-lie. You have been successful in removing the SR as a boot media, replaced by the Drive C: environment.

Your call of course!

[PaulB]

OK Paul, did some more research.

Thanks for all your research, Bob. I appreciate it. There are good suggestions there that I will probably use in the future.

Aside from the above... my real recommendation is to leave-sleeping-dogs-lie.

Yes, I agree with you! I will leave things as they are for now. The original article made it look so easy.

[Bigaldoc]

This post has as its purpose simply to "second" John Gray's mention of the Easeus Partition Manager software.

In my somewhat long thread at Shadow Protect Restore From CD, after getting up and running I used Easeus to increase my new drive's C: partition from 70 to 150 gig and it only took seconds to do so. Surprisingly it didn't even require a reboot when I "applied" the change.

[BobH]

With a hard drive of the size indicated, why bother with trying to recover 101 megabytes?

Yes, I'm an old codger and remember when I got my first 5 kilobyte hard drive; so I know about being able to use 100% of the resources one purchases; however, one can buy multi-terabyte hard drives nowadays for about $100. Going after the return of 101mb to use seems an inappropriate expenditure of time and effort.

just my 2¢