XP Partiton resize problem/dilemma

[Radiate]

Hello everyone

I have a harddrive with three partitions and in XP they are assigned as G:, J: and M:

G: and J: are on a EXTENDED PARTITON.

We leave M: alone in this case

XP is installed on J:

G: is a legacy partition which has followed generations of drives at my place by cloning software similar to Ghost. But now it has become a pain. It is too small for anything useful.

What I'd like is to delete this partiton and let J: take te freed space.

I know this is possible (in theory) with programs such as PQMagic, Acronis DD Suite, and some shareware/freeware programs.

I've had success earlier with shrinking G: and letting J: take this space.

BUT when repeating this two years later everything got messed up, one g: was fine but j: was wrecked, i had fortunately a backup but i did not manage to restore xp to its normal state again.

I have enough free space to take a backup of G: and J: The problem however is that since XP is installed on J: the following things can happen, I'm not sure however:

1. boot.ini contains reference to partiton and disk for the windows install. It would be reasonable to assume that this mapping will be ruined when deleting G: and it is hard to modify boot.ini without getting into XP.

2. AND even worse, the letters will change. J: might become G: and then the whole system will wreck itself because the registry points to absolute path (J:\Windows) countless times.

3. If G: is deleted but XP boots nicely into windows there's still a risk of the letter-assignments getting ruined when resizing the J: partiton.

A possible solution i've considered is using something like purchasing Acronis TrueImage and make an image of the xp partiton. delete both G: and J: make a new partiton and restore the image back on this new partiton. Although this is the most safe way considering the risks involved in resizing i do not know what wil happen with drive letter assignments and what letter windows will assign to its system partiton.

Could anyone with experience in this provide assistance to this as to how i can achieve this.

 

[Pirotech]

2. AND even worse, the letters will change. J: might become G: and then the whole system will wreck itself because the registry points to absolute path (J:\Windows) countless times.

It could be a real problem actually. The only way IMHO is to back up your partition using TrueImage for example, remove G: partition then. Your J: partition will become G: most probably.

So you should be ready for drive letter changing. Main troubles in system disk letter changing are exactly related with absolute registry path errors. So if you change letter in order to have proper registry entry it won't cause many problems IMHO. However you need to back up just in case.