Topic: partitions

[Baz]

is it possible to alter partition sizes. My son has a laptop and he wants to change sizes if possible.using Windows 7 its split already to OS  C: 149.05GB NTFS   system,boot,page file/active/crash dump, primary partition; DATA  D: 134.39GB  NTFS  Logical Drive; and there also shows a 14.65GB    Primary partition  which doesnt seem to have any thing showing.All drives show as healthy.

how much space would he need for each partition like the OS say.he just wanted more space for music and photos and seems that the OS partition is bigger than needed.is this right


also what would be the best way to do a back up on the laptop

thanks

[Simon]

This might be of interest, Baz >> http://www.partition-tool.com/

[Sandra]

The only problem with altering the size of the boot partition, ie C: , is that sometimes the recovery disc wont work as its looking for a partition of the size it was initially made from. So make an image of the drive once you have resized it and got the programs that you are going to use installed on it.

Windows 7s disk management seems a bit restricted so you are probably better off using a 3rd party program such as Simon has mentioned.
40 to 60 gig used to be a good size for XP, provided you make sure that everything downloaded is saved to a different partition or drive. Dont let stuff just download to where it wants which will usually be in the users folder of C, that can soon fill it up.

For Vista and windows 7 I tend to make the boot partition 80 to 100 gig as most PCs are coming with bigger and bigger drives and the OSs and programs tend to take up more room than earlier versions did when installed.

If you image the boot partition you only really need to back up any data, music and videos which are probably best done to an external hard drive which you can update whenever you like.

[sam]

NTFS allows you to grow or shrink the disk size.. but indeed you will have to watch what it does. If you can't do this with the windows partition manager then I could suggest a linux live cd with will allow  you todo this (don't worry you won't have to install linux)

Before doing anything though backup (but that goes without saying).

Indeed a usb disk would do the trick or if you are networked to another machine then you could just copy the data over to that.