Expanding a Partition in Windows 7

How do I do it? My current partition is too small, and I only have 6 gigs left after installing all of my basic programs. The built in partitioning tool has the expand option grayed out. What do I do?

Actually, I just now deleted the partition in hopes of making a bigger one. I have 452gb of free space on my hard drive, but Vista will only allow me to make a 30gb partition. I'm starting to think about giving up on dual booting as I'm already in love with Windows 7, but I would lose all of my data if I installed Windows 7 on my Vista hard drive wouldn't I?

But when I reinstalled Windows 7 on my partition, it put my old files in a folder called Windows.old..

I'll probably end up doing a fresh install. I don't have anything important on my hard drive, just games.

Windows is telling you that you only have 30GB free because, although you have a lot of free space on your drive, you have files scattered all over the drive instead of all grouped up together.

huh? that doesnt make sense. files scattered all over the place dont take up more space than they would if they werent scattered. a defrag does not give you free space. it just arranges your files so that the most used files are at the beginning of the disk (which is the outer part of the platter), and that the data clusters are arranged in one contiguous group as much as possible.

deleting the paging file is the dumbest thing you can do - while its not as necessary as it used to be, there will always be something written to the paging file. while it used to be 1.5 times the size of your current RAM, a good enough amount is around 1024 megs. setting the minimum and maximum to this value stops it from being variable, and hence you dont waste resources on it being resized every now and then.

deleting restore points isnt going to do all that much either, and i dont recommend deleting them unless you are certain that your computer is in a pristine condition which wont need a restore.

boot defrags, again dont do too much. NTFS systems make defrags almost obsolete. you gain little improvement from defragging an NTFS system.

you want to free up as much space as possible? download and install CCleaner. it will clean out what is safe to clean out, and comes with a registry cleaner as well. best of all is its freeware.

Windows 7 built-in tool has "shrink" and "Expand" functions, but there must be some unallocated space clinging to the partition which you want to expand so that you can use "Expand" function of Windows Disk Management. If there is not unallocated space clinging to the partition which you want to expand, how to expand windows 7 partition? A free partition magic is the best choice. I searched in google website and found easeus partition master is free for windows home users. I download the home version of easeus partition master, it is so easy to expand my system partition.

he said something about eating bananas and magically extending partitions or something.

dunno

quote Vendetta

Actually, I just now deleted the partition in hopes of making a bigger one. I have 452gb of free space on my hard drive, but Vista will only allow me to make a 30gb partition. I'm starting to think about giving up on dual booting as I'm already in love with Windows 7, but I would lose all of my data if I installed Windows 7 on my Vista hard drive wouldn't I?

Can't you install it using the 'upgrade' option? I am sure there is an option where it will install Windows 7 over Vista, and keep all the programs, settings, documents and everything, so you don't have to do everything again.

Windows 7 has got the ability to expand partitions, assuming that there is non-partitioned (empty) space for it to expand into. If there isn't, then you have the ability to shrink a partition so you can create space for another. Saves on reformatting.

quote jack163

Windows 7 built-in tool has "shrink" and "Expand" functions, but there must be some unallocated space clinging to the partition which you want to expand so that you can use "Expand" function of Windows Disk Management. If there is not unallocated space clinging to the partition which you want to expand, how to expand windows 7 partition? A free partition magic is the best choice. I searched in google website and found easeus partition master is free for windows home users. I download the home version of easeus partition master, it is so easy to expand my system partition.

I can completely understand what he said, on other words, you can use "Extend" function of Windows 7 built in disk management tool when there is unallocated space behind this partition.If there is no unallocated space behind this partition,free partition tool is the best choice, such as EASEUS Partition Master he recommended.