Question: Partitioning for Win7?

In lieu of the public Beta of Win7 on Friday, I know that a lot of people are going to be downloading the link with the intention of playing around with it. I'm one of those people who is going to be hunkered in my room waiting for the link to appear so that I can download. However, I have a problem that I suspect many other NBR members may have:

How do I partition an already mounted hard drive?

I found many links talking about different programs and such that can be used, but none of them really gave a step-by-step 'how to' on the matter. So, what I was wondering is . . .

Can one of the more knowledgeable members with a lot of time on his or her hands mind producing a layman's tutorial for the rest of the members who may need the help?

That's a huge request and perhaps an even "huger" task, so I know that I may get laughed at for even suggesting it, but whatever. I'll take it if it means that I may be able to learn something new in the process. Any taker?

Don't forget, the public Beta will be available this Friday, January 9.

Disclaimer: I apologize if I missed something during my search. I also used Google, but I admit that I'm still a bit confused; hence, the reason I used layman's tutorial.

 

This is a great free program for partitioning. It works great and is easy. All you need to do is download and it can partition your hard drive without messing up and boot loaders or other junk. I have used it and it works. It is better than the built in Microsoft partition manager.


Screenshots

Just click on the left side "Resize/Move Partition" to make it smaller then go from there.

 

^^^Thanks, Jay. I guess it sounds simple enough. I wish I knew that before I made the thread. If I have any questions, I presume that I can come to you, no?

 

Of course!

 

Cool beans. Thank you very much.

 

Awesome find Jay! I added it to the 'ever growing list of free windows apps' in the Disk Management section.

 

NOTE: that program does not work with VISTA 64-bit.

If you have VISTA you can use the built in tools, click the START ORB, right click COMPUTER, left click MANAGE, go to the DISK MANAGER, select your partition, right click, choose SHRINK VOLUME.

Now, it's worth noting that we need to actually see the Beta to make sure it can be installed in a dual boot format. I'm sure it probably can be, but until I get the bits in hand, I'm going to wait to say for certain.

 

That sucks how they made the free version only for 32-bit. Why?

http://www.partition-tool.com/

 

Thanks for the note, I'll make a quick blurb on it in the list since many are likely to try it on their systems before heading the warning.

 

Ah man, that sucks. Of course the premium version DO and the free version DOES NOT. Can anyone point me in the direction of one that works with x64?

Also, gerry, can you let me know if the Beta can be dual-booted?

 

Again, since the one floating around there can, I would expect this one can. Some early VISTA betas caused problems with dual boots, but from all I've heard the only real panic inducer is Windows Media Player corrupting MP3s.

 

^^^I hear you.

 

There's already a hotfix out for the mp3 issue.

 

Fortune has found me... I remembered that I have an old 20GB hard-drive (that sadly spins at a measly 5400 RPM) that I could use. I'm going to get an external enclosure for it and use that to install the Windows 7 Beta on Friday. I've invested way too much in my current setup that I don't want to mess anything up with the main hard-drive.

 

Started a dual boot setup with no problems.

Within Vista 64, went to disk management and shrunk the Windows partition as described above, rebooted with Windows 7 cd, choose the unused portion of the disk and it's installing right now.

No surprises (I hate surprises)...well, one surprise...the little glow balls at the setup start that come together to form the windows logo are purrttyyyyy

 

This is great news to hear! I guess having a two day waiting period will be beneficial in trying to plan out a strategy with what to do with my system. Vista is running great on my machine so don't want to mess that up, but I do want to move into using Windows 7 as my primary OS.

 

I'll just install it on my machine and won't care. I can just go to my homeserver and tell it to restore the vista backup afterwards

but yes, just rightclick on "Computer" in the startmenu, choose "Manage" and go to the disk management tool. it's not really that complicated. shrink your partition to get free space for win7.

i count 7 clicks, one slider movement to the left, and an okay. (and possibly an "are you sure" in the end haven't really done it ).

 

^^^Sounds almost too easy.

 

Or you can use gparted.
Does anyone know how much space we need for 7?
I've a 20gig 2.5"HD in a usb enclosure - should that be enough?
I just resized my partitions yesterday and don't want to go through all that again

 

Supposed to need 16gb of harddrive space for the requisite copy and expansion of files, but when all is said and done, you are using less than 8gb after install.

Once again, I urge people to be wary of third party partitioning tools with drives originally formatted with Vista.

Vista's partitioning scheme is slightly different than XP so drives freshly partitioned and formatted with Vista may not be accessible when a third party tool goes in and starts mucking with the master boot record and partition boot records.

If your disk was originally set up with XP or earlier OS, vista is backwards compatible and leaves the disk structures alone while installing, but if Vista was used to create your drive partitioning scheme you may find a third party program will kill your Vista install (at the very least you will have to repair it).

Alot of OEMs partitioned their original images with third party programs so you should be OK, but I've had to fix several systems for people who used third party partition resizing programs who were unaware of this.

 

Very true. I just deleted my 10gig recovery artition and used gparted to reallocate it to C:
When I rebooted, the Vista boot file had gone wonky and I had to do a repair with the Vista disk. No biggy, but it scared the out of me at the time!

 

I am under the assumption that 7 is pretty much like Vista, so I used this guide as a reference. I used a different program for the partition management, though, but it's pretty much the same.

When I changed the "Earlier version of Windows" to "Windows XP" for the boot manager, I managed to corrupt my XP boot. It's an "ntldr missing or corrupt" issue. I ran across some articles a long time ago mentioning that this has been a problem even with Vista dual boots, so after a bit of searching, I found this article which saved my XP boot and my life. Now, so far in these past two days after this mess happened, all has been well and good. I'm dual booting 7 and XP for almost a week now.