non-destructive partitioning tool

[phoenix79]

Does anyone know of a freeware or cheap tool that can re-size NTFS partitions on the fly? Partition Magic used to be able to do this years ago but it was bought by symantec IIRC and could only do FAT at the time. Any ideas?

 

[mc866]

Gparted live disc

 

[lxskllr]

Originally posted by: mc866
Gparted live disc

This is what I use. Do backup before repartitioning no matter the tool you use. I've never had an issue, but sometimes bad things happen. You don't want to lose anything that isn't replaceable :^)

 

[Griffinhart]

Originally posted by: phoenix79
Does anyone know of a freeware or cheap tool that can re-size NTFS partitions on the fly? Partition Magic used to be able to do this years ago but it was bought by symantec IIRC and could only do FAT at the time. Any ideas?

If you are running Vista or the Win7 Beta, you are looking for Disk Manager, which is built into Windows. Both OS's allow you to resize your partitions.

 

[phoenix79]

I'm running XP and trying to make room for Win 7 RC. Thanks for the advice. This is my work machine so I can back most stuff up to the network drive (yes, I am an IT admin so don't yell at me for breaking my work computer).

 

[dawks]

O&O Partition Manager

One thing to note.. Not that you're doing this right now but, I had 2 partitions on my system, OS and data. I wanted to expand my OS partition, so I shrunk the data partition. But the option to expand the OS partition was grayed out. What you need to do is move the data partition to the end of the drive, then you can expand the OS drive.

 

[MrColin]

Its worth mentioning that you defrag the partition you want to resize beforehand also. +1 for gparted on livecd

 

[Chapbass]

gparted, acronis disk director.


Partitionmagic does work on NTFS partitions, but certain functions mess with the vista bootloader, id advise against using partitionmagic with vista.

 

[VinDSL]

GParted (again) with a twist...

I've been using the GParted partitioner on the Puppy Linux Live CD.

Works the same, but it's prettier - and there are a lot of other good utilities/tools on that disk too!