Question How do I Change OS Partition size in Win-7

dan99t

Member
Nov 29, 2011
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I have installed Windows 7 on a new SSD.
But the OS Partition size is too small. ( As shown in attachment )
I have lots of free space on an adjacent partition as shown.
How do I take some space from there and make OS Partition bigger.
I am not an expert so I will appreciate as much detailed instruction as possible.

Thank You
 

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mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
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Start, Computer, right-click, Manage
Disk Management
if there are any partitions you've made yourself to the right of the partition you want to resize, then get rid of them.
Right-click on the partition you'd like to make bigger, then select 'extend'.
There's a couple of extra steps in a wizard-type UI that ask you how much bigger you'd like to make it, I can't guide you through those off the top of my head.
finish, done.
 

Tech Junky

Diamond Member
Jan 27, 2022
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Why do you need such a huge Windows partition?

There are security issues when you hit certain sizes beyond 100GB. There's no reason to have a huge partition for the OS + Apps. As a rule of thumb I give the OS 100GB to split up into the 4-5 partitions it wants to use and then use the remaining area as "storage".

1662291602537.png

If you're hellbent on moving / resizing just delete the partition as mentioned and extend the one you want more space on. If there were data there then I would use a Linux USB to boot from and gparted to move things around while Windows was offline.

The next thing is why are you still using W7? Sure W8 was a bomb but, W10 isn't too bad and W11 is just lipstick on a pig to feel more like a Mac.
 
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Jul 27, 2020
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The next thing is why are you still using W7? Sure W8 was a bomb but, W10 isn't too bad and W11 is just lipstick on a pig to feel more like a Mac.
I'm guilty of that on my work PC too. If it's working fine, I see no reason to mess with it. Does everything I need it to and it's firewalled so no security problems. Win10/11 IS more of a disk activity hog. Unless there is a really good reason, Win7 is gonna keep serving me. My backup work PC has Win10.
 

Tech Junky

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Please elaborate?
IIRC it has to do with VSS and additional measures needed to mitigate privilege issues to secure things that your average user won't think of running.

Regardless though limiting Windows in size just makes sense as it will inevitably have issues and need to be wiped / replaced.

1662295080836.png

Even with all the junk installed there's ample room for additional junk to be installed. There's no need to have a 1TB OS partition if you simply save the data you don't want to lose on a different partition. You can even install apps into a different partition and shrink the OS partition even further. IIRC after a clean install of W10/11 you can squeeze things down to ~50GB with updates installed. There's a lot of idiot proofing that consumes space that's not really needed. The default settings typically allocate tons of space for restoring files that get deleted. There's no reason to allocate 50GB of space for recycling on a 1TB drive.

Then again with typical GPU driver downloads now hitting 1GB/GPU for some people it might be easier to just allow more space to be used. Keeping a tidy disk though allows for better response times when using it. Decluttering is key to not having issues. Pushing the "Downloads" location to the secondary partition makes it transparent to the user but, also keeps all of the random files we tend to DL and forget about out of the way of the system having to parse them for indexing.

When systems / HDD's were limited in space it was easier to get performance from it by using more space on a HDD vs adding additional resources to speed things up. Kind of like a swap file in Linux for low budget setups. Windows took the same approach with the pagefile. Disabling this tends to free up quite a bit of space and the system using RAM instead of disk space makes it run smoother.
 
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Windows took the same approach with the pagefile. Disabling this tends to free up quite a bit of space and the system using RAM instead of disk space makes it run smoother.
Used to do that on my Sandy Bridge i3 with 32GB RAM. It did run smoother. But with Win10 and Chrome/Firefox, I wouldn't try doing that unless I have 64GB RAM minimum. But that's just me.
 

Tech Junky

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@igor_kavinski
Yeah, today's junk in Windows needs 32gb in my book as well. Linux on the other hand only needs 4gb but gets 16gb for redundancy. Windows allocates 4gb at boot and average of 10-12gb at idle fully loaded with apps open. There are still some leaks that balloon things to 16gb or so and opening a game might push it to 20gb. 32 just allows for everything to stay open and running smoothly for me. It also keeps the disk activity down to extend the drive life.
 
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mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
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Regardless though limiting Windows in size just makes sense as it will inevitably have issues and need to be wiped / replaced.

It's not inevitable at all, it depends entirely on the user. I can't remember when I last had to do a reinstall/repair/etc on my own system for any other reason than hardware changes. It's likely more than twenty years ago, back to when I used to actively screw with Windows.

I used to have the same view as you regarding partitioning because it made reinstalling easier, but that was before the days of cheap USB mass storage. While I know the score well enough with Windows to know what risks are worth taking, it's not something I'd recommend to less experienced users (who haven't learnt the hard way at least once by for example losing data due to an OS installer deciding to wipe out all partitions!).
 

dan99t

Member
Nov 29, 2011
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IIRC it has to do with VSS and additional measures needed to mitigate privilege issues to secure things that your average user won't think of running.

Regardless though limiting Windows in size just makes sense as it will inevitably have issues and need to be wiped / replaced.
I am sure you are an expert. But please explain in English to us who are novice.
I 10 yeares ago decided to run 12 monitors from a single system with 2.5 PCIe lanes with no knoledge of hardware & still using it with Win-7.
I'm guilty of that on my work PC too. If it's working fine, I see no reason to mess with it. Does everything I need it to and it's firewalled so no security problems. Win10/11 IS more of a disk activity hog. Unless there is a really good reason, Win7 is gonna keep serving me. My backup work PC has Win10.
Thank you.

I am using Malwarebytes ( Free Version ) and ESET antivirus. And I think I have Windows firewall but not sure so how do I find that out ?
 
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Can you please tell me which firewall are using ? For my peace of mind.
I am using Malwarebytes ( Free Version ) and ESET antivirus. And I think I have Windows firewall but not sure so how do I find that out ?
firewall.pngsophos.png

ESET has Windows Firewall disabled. And Sophos is blocking everything except a few whitelisted sites. Sophos is the hardware firewall (called an Internet Threat Management (ITM) device according to them) sitting between the ISP's box and our office network switch.
 

dan99t

Member
Nov 29, 2011
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Here are two images.
Please someone tell me what should I do in img-2 to add 40.00 GB to my OS Partition ?
 

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mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
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Ok. Here is what I have now. Do I now have the 200 GB OS Partition ? If Yes, I can not Thank You enough.
Let me test it out by opening my imp apps.

Looks about right. I am curious though, first of all how is it that you're running out of space on C drive? If I had to guess, that's currently where all your stuff is? Secondly, given that you're obviously not that confident about this sort of thing, I would just make C drive use all the space on that drive.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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Looks about right. I am curious though, first of all how is it that you're running out of space on C drive? If I had to guess, that's currently where all your stuff is? Secondly, given that you're obviously not that confident about this sort of thing, I would just make C drive use all the space on that drive.
I myself -- on two almost identical systems (one Kaby, the other Sky) -- have way more storage than I need, but it's all just fine with me. The Skylake had a Win 7 boot-system volume and a Win 10 boot-system volume in a dual-boot configuration on a 1TB Sammy 960Pro NVME. I've resized those volumes more than once, without any trouble, and then I deleted the Win 7 volume, moved some things around and made the Win10 boot volume consume the entire drive.

Eventually, with so many volumes you might create on a single drive, you have a lot of drive letters to manage in your head. Both of my systems have a C:, E:, F: with a G: for Macrium backup.

C: is the NVME; E: is an SATA SSD, and F: is a 2.5" 2TB spinner. I'll never run out of space. The Skylake has an SK Hynix 1TB NVME instead of an SATA SSD.

Something else I (finally) discovered today: A "custom" Pagefil.sys that was only 1GB and choking my system after a half-day's usage. There had been "advice" on tech sites a half-decade ago about "custom" pagefil.sys configuration for SSDs. Best thing to do: Let the system manage the Pagefil.sys automatically.
 

dan99t

Member
Nov 29, 2011
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Looks about right. I am curious though, first of all how is it that you're running out of space on C drive?
First I must Thank all of you.
The reason I am running out of space on C: is that one of my stock market application saves data in it's own folder in C: drive. Letting data accumulate in that folder gives me an instantaneous access to few years data on IMP symbols.
 
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The reason I am running out of space on C: is that one of my stock market application saves data in it's own folder in C: drive. Letting data accumulate in that folder gives me an instantaneous access to few years data on IMP symbols.
NTFS symlink comes to mind.

NTFS Hard Links, Junctions and Symbolic Links (2brightsparks.com)

Symlinks in Windows 10! - Windows Developer Blog

The Complete Guide to Creating Symbolic Links (aka Symlinks) on Windows (howtogeek.com)
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
17,577
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First I must Thank all of you.
The reason I am running out of space on C: is that one of my stock market application saves data in it's own folder in C: drive. Letting data accumulate in that folder gives me an instantaneous access to few years data on IMP symbols.

A simple solution if available is to look for a setting in the app to change the data storage location, if you plan on having multiple partitions/disks.
 
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