Nice free “Windows” partition manager

[MilesAhead]

HDD Regenerator is quite usefull as well when it comes to bad sectors

That's the first I heard of this one. The description sounds wild. You have used it to good effect though?

[UncasMS]

see post above mine, doc

++++++++++++

@miles

i used this tool some days ago on a drive which had quite a few bad sectors and led to constant crashes
i did not, however, recover all of them - no idea if spinrite would have done any better

sometimes you wsill have to admit that **** cannot always be turned into gold
ordered a new drive for this machine and was able to move all important data for the person this pc belonged to

[blutach]

@kev - mom was happy!

XP SP3 is the OS, no virtual drives.

I suspect Chewy is right. chkdsk /r found one file in a bad cluster and moved it (thankfully, it was something that was totally useless). However, even after deleting the file, that did not help with Easeus.

I thought if you had adjacent free space the Disk Management in XP Pro would expand the previous volume to incorporate it.

Can somebody confirm this please (i.e. non-destruct expansion)? That would be all I really need. Bear in mind it is XP3 SP3 HOME.

After running a surface scan on both C: & D: try running Partition Manager again and make sure to shut down as many programs as possible. Like the firewall, virus, etc.

Did that, no good. The D partition is fine and "contracted" without issues.

Please be aware guys this is a one-time op. So I'm not in the mood to pay lotsabux to do this. If it can't be done for free, I'll keep it is as it - there is 4.5Gb free on C anyway. But thanks for mentioning disc recovery progs.

Regards

[Abuilder]

Les
Did you try to put things back the way they were? Put that 4.5 GB back on D: or are you locked out of the unallicated space altogether?

[blutach]

Yes, and it worked. So, I am back to where I started!

Regards

[Abuilder]

Les
Do you have a 1.44 floppy drive in that laptop USB or internal that you can boot off of?

[MilesAhead]

see post above mine, doc

++++++++++++

@miles

i used this tool some days ago on a drive which had quite a few bad sectors and led to constant crashes
i did not, however, recover all of them - no idea if spinrite would have done any better

sometimes you wsill have to admit that **** cannot always be turned into gold
ordered a new drive for this machine and was able to move all important data for the person this pc belonged to

Heh. And those alchemist dudes wasted their time starting with lead!! No wonder they never got anywhere!!!

I just asked because the write-up sounded like snake oil. But I guess if you told somebody about an antibiotic saving their ass a couple hundred years ago they would say "um, yeah, there's these little invisible thingies swimming around in my blood and this thing will keep me from dying because it will kill them before they kill me? That's rubbish! I know damn well it's a demon makin' me sick sonny!!"

[MilesAhead]

GParted has a pretty good reputation so esp. if you are backed up it may be the freeware way to move things around. Here's the doc page for partition resize. At the bottom there are provisos for NTFS partitions and XP.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/resize/resizing.htm

I just downloaded the GParted LiveCD image in case I need it in the future.

edit: there seems to be some uncertainty concerning RAID and GParted. So if you have RAID I'd research it. Other than that I haven't seen a lot of crying on forums about "GParted hosed my system" and I've used it a few times myself so I'd say it's probably pretty dependable if your devices are supported.

[Abuilder]

Miles
Seeing that you are running Vista you have to take special considerations after using the Gparted live-cd.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-gparted-to-resize-your-windows-vista-partition/

[blutach]

Les
Do you have a 1.44 floppy drive in that laptop USB or internal that you can boot off of?

Just a CDR or a USB.

Regards

[MilesAhead]

Miles
Seeing that you are running Vista you have to take special considerations after using the Gparted live-cd.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...sta-partition/

That's hairy since I have no install DVD. For slicing off a piece of free space to add XP or something like that, the Vista disk manager applet thing works. Maybe I should cut the GPartedCD in half to make sure I don't boot it!!

Thanks for pointing that out.

Guess that Paragon one might be worth looking into. otoh, since this is 64 bit machine the odds I'll be putting a 32 bit OS on are low for a couple years I think. Unless I just do it when it becomes the "old pc" so I'll have XP someplace. If I can get all the drivers etc..

It's definitely on the back burner.

[MilesAhead]

Just FYI, I downloaded the Paragon Partition Manager 9.0 Express and ran the install. It doesn't do Vista64 but installs on Vista 32 bit. The install has a "get free license" button and you can use a hotmail address to get the free license mailed to you.

afaik this Express doesn't let you delete a partition. But you can use any freebie partition program that supports your hw like Cute Partition Manager or whatever to just boot up and delete the offending partition.

From what I'm reading Vista is very sensitive to the start of the partition being moved and even a resize may hose you if you don't have the install CD to do a repair. Without a repair CD about the only safeguard I know of is a disk image that you can lay back on to get back to square one. This is really a pita if they're not going to provide an OS CD in the box. Either that or they should have a button in Control Panel to create a bootable CD that can fix up the boot settings. Putting you machine back to like it was before you installed 200 programs is a bit lame imho.

[blutach]

GParted has a pretty good reputation so esp. if you are backed up it may be the freeware way to move things around. Here's the doc page for partition resize. At the bottom there are provisos for NTFS partitions and XP.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/resize/resizing.htm

I just downloaded the GParted LiveCD image in case I need it in the future.

@Miles

I tried gparted, but it came back with the same thing - 3 sectors are bad, run chkdsk etc and then use ntfsresize with the -b option.

So, my question is this - anyone know where I can download a live CD of ntfsresize (or ntfstools I guess they are called) since I don't have a linux installation? TIA.

Regards

[Abuilder]

Les
chkdsk /f doesn't work for NTFS partitions from sp2 up. Boot from the XP CD and go into recovery console and use the command FIXMBR then restart windows and do a scandisk on c: which will require a reboot to start and run at windows startup.
edit: skip the linux ntfsresize for now

[blutach]

Hmmmm.... I'm getting a big caution from M$ on this. It says I have a non-standard or invalid MBR and that Fixmbr may damage the partition tables if I proceed and cause the partitions to become inaccessible. It says if I am not having problems accessing my drive, do not continue. Then, funnily enough (after scaring the bejesus outa me), it asks me if I want write a new MBR anyway.

Plus, I don't think scandisk is there anymore. Wasn't it replaced some time ago?

Perhaps that Paragon 8.5 can help? I'll try. This is a pain.

Regards