Space on another drive - not sure how to move it

londonman81

I've found a drive on my PC labelled as 'Backup' and it seems to have 50GB spare.

Since I would like to have this space as part of my main C: drive (which is full) I need to know how I can move this space to the main drive.

Is there any way I can do this??

Thanks!

cooltt

The 50GB is there for a reason the more you have on your pc the more space you will need to back up but you can if you wish resize the drives to get more space on C drive. Use a programme like partition magic which allows you to do this without having to re-install windows.

If you have a recovery disc that came with your PC you can get rid of your back up drive altogether but this is another process which you need to know what your doing.

fwor

As cooltt says, but be very very careful. If the resize goes wrong - and they sometimes do - then you may lose the one partition that you really need to be able to restore the PC to working order again.

londonman81

fwor wrote: »

As cooltt says, but be very very careful. If the resize goes wrong - and they sometimes do - then you may lose the one partition that you really need to be able to restore the PC to working order again.

Is there any way I can tell that a re-sizing is going to go wrong, before it actually goes wrong?

GunJack

unfortunately, not normally, no

londonman81

I've downloaded Partition Wizard and have used it to reduce the size of the backup drive to 20GB (having started at 50GB).

However, the extra space freed up from doing this seems to be showing as 'unallocated' and I can't figure out how to add it to the C: drive....?!? When I try to re-size the C: drive it just shows the original size with only scope for an extra 50MB of space

Any clues?

Taffybiker

It's just a guess, but perhaps the Backup and C drives have different formatting?

fwor

This is probably because you now have free space at the end of the drive. A partition needs to be contiguous free space, and your backup partition now sits between your C; drive partition and the unallocated space.

You need to be able to move the backup partition to the end of the free space - I've never used Partition Wizard so I don't know if it is capable of doing that.

computershack

Are you running Windows Vista or Windows 7? If so, use the partitioning tools in Disk Management to resize the partitions.

closed

I would suggest backing up with disk imaging tools before you rejig the partitions too much.

Knowing which operating system you are using would help people advise you, and also specify the order of the partitions and unallocated space, are they all ntfs?

turbobob

If the program you have will allow it you could expand your main partition (C: drive) to use the free space you've created. Alternatively you could use the free space to create and format a new partition. As already said any partition resizing can go wrong and you could trash the whole lot. I've had this happen to me so I would recommend backing up anything thats critical onto a physically seperate drive (e.g. an external hard drive).