Enlarging the boot partition.

[Born2bwire]

Eh, probably not that difficult of a question but I don't know the answer off the top of my head.

So I got an SSD since my Seagates kept failing. The OS install was built using the Asus Windows Restore disc which means that while I get a fresh install of Win 7 I also get a 20 GB hidden partition made for factory restores. Since I have the restore disc I don't need the factory restore partition and in particular with only 150 GB of space on the SSD I really do not want it. But the problem is that the factory restore partition is the first partition and the system partition is the second.

It appears that the diskpart utility in Windows 7 can only extend partitions into contiguous blocks of memory (which appears worthless in the case of SSD I would imagine) and since the system partition is the SECOND partition I cannot extend it to envelop the now deleted factory restore partition.

Do you guys have a suggestion on a safe and easy way to extend my boot partition so that it takes up the whole disk?

 

[PottedMeat]

do you have a 2nd computer available?

i'd put the drive into a another computer, image the boot partition using acronis true image (macrium reflect free edition does this too i believe ) , delete all the partitions, and there should be a resize option when restoring. i think you may have to set the active/bootable partition flag yourself in the drive manager/computer management ( dunno the equiv in win7 ) - i've only done this with XP & HDDs though.


i've used some freeware standalone partition resizers and though they 'worked' i'd still come up with errors in scandisk.

 

[Born2bwire]

No, I don't have another computer handy. I might be able to image the damn thing onto an external hard drive via USB but I really would hate to have to copy, wipe, copy it all again. Just seems like a silly thing to go through for this.

 

[Blain]

EaseUS Partition Master is all you need.
Simple, Fast & Free

 

[mfenn]

It appears that the diskpart utility in Windows 7 can only extend partitions into contiguous blocks of memory (which appears worthless in the case of SSD I would imagine)

Just as point of clarification, in this case it doesn't matter that your drive is an SSD. Tools at this level only deal with logical block addresses and don't really care where the data is physically located.

Anyway, I'd probably use an offline tool like the Gparted live CD to move the partitions around.