Concerns about resizing C: on Win7

I've been asked by a friend to help free disk space on her C: drive. When I look I find her C: is allocated 39gb and is full. She has a D: partition that is well over 400gb and is 7% used.

My first thought is to shrink the D:, no problem, then allocate that space to the C:.

I did some research and see warnings that expanding the C: could corrupt the O/S. However I can't find anyone who has actually experienced corruption. Is it a valid concern?

The other note I found said that only contiguous space can be added when expanding. On her drive she has as follows:

39gb unallocated
39gb SYSC: NTFS, Healthy
39gb unallocated
365gb SYSD:
122gb unallocated

Can I safely expand the C: to use anything other than just the one 39gb space immediately after it?

Thanks

First of all, make a backup of the C: drive, and make sure you have a copy of the D: drive data.

Who set up that drive? That is wacky. Plus 39GB is really low for a Win7 system partition. You'd need contiguous space, so either the 39GB befor or after the C: drive should be fine.

You'd have to use a third party tool to expand the C: drive anyway. Minitool is a good freebie.
http://partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Thanks. I freed up the space after the D: drive. The others were that way when she bought the system. She thinks it was a refurbished system.

I will get Minitool and try it.

My biggest concern is how to backup her C:.

I just had a horrible thought! I'm not sure there is enough freespace on the C: to install any more software, like Minitool.

Do a disk clean up.
TFC by oldtime is what i use.
http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/files...r-by-oldtimer/

Maybe you will find 7 GB of garbage to remove.

Then you can install the 8,1 MB tool.

What's the best method for backing up this system? I get nervous messing around on other people's system and I've never actually had to perform a recovery.

I'm thinking of buying a portable hard drive and using the Control Panel options to create a system repair disc, then create a system image on the portable drive.

Thanks

Minitool has a bootable disc. You need to know how to properly burn .isos to CD.
http://partitionwizard.com/partition...otable-cd.html

I use Acronis True Image. What is the make/model of the drive? Seagate and WD have free versions of Acronis TI.

Quote:

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I'm thinking of buying a portable hard drive and using the Control Panel options to create a system repair disc, then create a system image on the portable drive.

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You can try that too. I've had better success with Acronis TI, though. Either way, you'll need a separate drive to save the disk image backup. A portable/external drive would be ideal.

I'm going through several videos on expanding C: in Win7 and they are saying as long as the unallocated space is immediately following the C: drive, which it is in this case, the disk management tool that comes with Win7 should have the EXPAND option available and it should work. The need for 3rd party software is if the space is not contiguous and has to be moved around.

Is their logic flawed or is it just safer to use 3rd party tools?

Well, you could use Disk Management, but I prefer using third party tools.

Either way, I would still make a backup.

I figured out some of the mystery regarding the way the partitions are setup. It seems her brother has installed BootIt and created the 2 extra partitions.

Whenever he comes over to her place he creates a backup of her C:, alternating between the 2 partitions so she always has 2 generations of backup. He tells me she is prone to picking up virus's.

Now I got learn BootIT to reclaim the space from one of those partitions.

Oy. Oh well. Too many cooks can spoil the soup. I guess it's good that you didn't mess around with it too much. Not the way I would do things, but that's how it is.

Not a big deal as it turns out. I did a system image backup then used disk manager to extend the C: into one of his backup partitions. Doubled her C: and its up to her brother to revamp his backup methodology. Thanks for the help.