Resize primary partition

Question

I have a hard drive with the folowing partition table

12Gb Primary Partition (ntfs) 140Gb Extended Partition (ntfs)

I want to install Windows 7 and I need more space for the Primary Partition.

The problem is that when I resize partitons I obtain:

12Gb Primary Partition (ntfs) 110Gb Extended Partition (ntfs) 30Gb Free Space

So I can't allocate the free space to primary partition because the free space is at the end of the disk.

Is there a solution to extend the primary partition as: 42Gb Primary Partition (ntfs) 110Gb Extended Partition (ntfs) without repartitioning the entire disk?

I used partition magic, gparted-live-0.4.6-4 and others with no success. With the Disk Management from Vista I manage to extend primary partition, but made my partitions dinamic.

Answer 1

You need to move the extended partition to the end of the disk so that the the empty space is just after the primary partition.

When you demand the partition manager to extend the primary, it can't automatically move the extended partition. You need to do this manually using your favorite partition manager. This is a very slow operation, so wait patiently.

In addition to the other partition managers that you've tried, you might also look at Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Free Edition. I haven't actually had the occasion to use it, but its interface looks nice.

Answer 2

Disclaimer: Like with all partition-altering methods, you should have a backup. I've worked with gparted for over 5 years now and never had a problem. But the possibility to lose everything is omnipresent when altering partitions.

With the gparted Live-CD you should be able to move the second NTFS partition to the end of the harddisk. Let me draw you some art:

: --> First Partition
| --> Second Partition
= --> Free Space

::::::||||||||||||||||||======== --> Now move the last partition to the end
::::::========|||||||||||||||||| --> Now you can allocate the additional space/resize
::::::::::::::||||||||||||||||||

Answer 3

But as the original extended partition is quite likely 'the rest of the space on the disk', you will quite likely have to shrinnk that partition before expanding the primary one.