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Part 2

Resizing An Existing Partition On A Single Hard Drive

The assumption here is the partition scheme will be created on a hard drive with Windows XP already installed. This is probably the most common situation that users face when considering changing to a more sophisticated partitioning scheme. In spite of the fact that a single hard drive can be configured in many different ways, it's a pretty safe bet that an off the shelf system will arrive in one of two basic configurations. Either the entire drive will be partitioned as C: as shown in Fig. 01 or it will be split into two partitions, one as C: that is visible and another partition that is hidden and contains an image of the operating system or the files that are used in conjunction with system manufacturer supplied Restore CD's.

Fig. 01

It's unfortunate that many of the systems being purchased today use the single partition approach that consumes the entire hard drive. It would be far more convenient if the system was supplied with a smaller system partition while leaving the rest of the drive space unallocated as shown below in Fig. 02. Much more efficient use of the hard drive can be made by partitioning the unallocated space for different purposes.

Look at the upper section of Fig. 01 and you'll see that 14.75 GB or 92% of the space on drive C: is free or unused. It's true that the only thing installed on C: at the moment is Windows XP, but if there was additional Unallocated space available it could be used for partitions to hold data and programs. All we need to do is just reclaim some of that unused space, converting it to Unallocated space, then create new Primary or Extended partitions. Simple enough, right? Unfortunately, no - not that simple. What we want to do is resize primary partition C: so there is less free space available, taking that extra free space and placing it into an Unallocated status as shown in Fig. 02. Here's the problem.

Fig. 02

You'd think that Disk Management would be capable of resizing the partition. It can't. In fact, Windows XP doesn't come with a utility that can perform a right to left (making the partition smaller) resizing operation. XP does ship with a command line utility called Diskpart that can increase (or extend as Microsoft calls it) the size of an existing partition into Unallocated space, but it has many limitations including being limited to left to right resizing operations, making it useless for the task we want to accomplish. So, how do you resize the partition in Fig. 01 to make it appear as shown in Fig. 02? There are two options; one good and one not so good. The methods are listed below.

Method 1 - Reinstall XP from a bootable CD and create an install partition that is smaller than the total capacity of the hard drive. Of course this method has a very substantial downside; everything on the hard drive, including data and applications, will be lost when the drive is formatted. While this method is effective it's only practical in a limited set of circumstances, unless of course you enjoy wiping a hard drive totally, designing a partitioning scheme in your mind, and then setting it up from scratch.
Method 2 - Use a program that is designed to handle partitioning tasks from inside the existing Windows operating system. The best known program of this type is probably PartitionMagic by PowerQuest, although there are many others including PartitionExpert by Acronis and Partition Commander by V Communications. A Google search will turn up many others as well as some free utilities to accomplish the same results.

I've been a long time user of Partition Magic and it has always served me well until recently. For some reason I've yet to determine, on several occasions while applying changes to a partition scheme using the latest version of PartitionMagic the system has rebooted and failed to restart due to corrupted boot files. I've been unable to replicate the behavior on any consistent basis but I do know the only times it has happened is during PartitionMagic use. For that reason I've been using PartitionExpert by Acronis and will use it for these screen captures.

Fig. 03

To begin the resizing process, select the partition to be resized and click Resize from the Operations toolbar.

Fig. 04

Compare the differences in the Resize Partition dialog boxes that took place as the size of the partition was modified. You can use the up and down arrows to make the changes or just type in the entry to speed up the process. In this example I wanted the Unallocated space to be after the C: partition, but in some cases you may want to shift the location to before the partition being resized.

Fig. 05

Once the partition size has been modified and the Unallocated space positioned properly, click OK to go back to the main PartitionExpert window and click the Commit icon on the toolbar (I can't tell if it's a checkered flag or a finish line representation, but it's the third icon from the left) to finalize the changes you've made.

Fig. 06

Now that the partition has been resized and unallocated space is available it's a straightforward process to divvy up the space into additional primary partitions or an extended partition and some logical drives within the extended partition. How the space is divided is up to you.

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Part 2

Resizing An Existing Partition On A Single Hard Drive

Next: Creating A Primary Partition In Unallocated Space

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