Growing a Partition

[Him]

I set up a computer for my buddy, and got him a 160gb drive for it. Whe i installed Windows, for some reason that I do not currently know, it formatted as a 140gb drive. There are 20gb unallocated. Well, he;s having me go back and fix it. What is the best utility I can use to grow a partition? The free-er the program, the better.

 

[Codeine]

Is that 20GB a serperate partition?

 

[Him]

No, i want to include it as the main partition. Make the main partition 20gb bigger. Right now it is just unallocated space.

 

[ShoobieRat]

...

This is very hard to do (and sometimes impossible).

You should try getting PartitionMagic, which can do these kinds of things. However, that costs money (not much, but it's not free).

 

[TheMajor]

It's not hard with Partition Magic. It's almost as easy as dragging icons around on your desktop

Always backup your important files though!

 

[Him]

It's a fairly new install, so I imagine there isnt much on there that is imperative. I have heard that sometimes using Partition Magic does mess things up. Either it can work REALLY well, OR it can hose your entire system. Truth?

There is a utility on the Seagate.com that said it is for growing partitions. I know that Seagate is pretty good about there software, with it working on drives other than just Seagate. Anyone have any experience with this utility? Cant find it at theutility at the moment, but it is there.

 

[desiboi]

I'll send you PartitionMagic, if you want it.

 

[Him]

SHOOBIE!!! Tight sig brotha.

 

[Nubius]

well you know you aren't going to get all 160gb viewable right? With that big of amount I think the biggest actual space you'd get to use is like 150gb........my 80gb shows as a 74gb

 

[Him]

Yeah, I do realize that. But I'm only seeing something like 134. I know that you dont get usually between 5 and 10 gb, but 24?! Thats ridiculous.