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Feeling Very Stupid!


robertplant

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It did not occur to me that Windows 7 has it's own partitioning tool, which was why my attempt to use GParted failed.

In the past GParted was used for partitioning off a HD with XP, and it worked pretty well.

The problem is that I have a 1TB Seagate OEM HD with only 442 GB's in use and would very much like Windows 7 to take over the whole drive.

I clicked on Control Panel> Administrative Tools> Create and Format HD Partitions.

Right click on C/.

It'll let me shrink it, but not expand it.

Other than doing a fresh install is there some way to get Windows 7 to take over the entire HD?

Are there any commands that can be entered from cmd.exe?

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks.

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You need to delete th eold partitions first and make sure there is unallocated space.

Agreed.

But the old partition does not seem to be visible on either GParted or on the Windows 7 GUI.

According to both there is 931 gigs of total space, but wen an attempt is made to expand the Windows 7 partition beyond 442 gigs, it is not allowed.

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How is the drive divided? There must be an empty space before the windows partition, besides the 100MB or so that Windows 7 also uses.

I can only tell you what "Computer" and "Disk Management" show.

When clicking on "Computer" it shows "C:/" to be a total of 442 Gigabytes.

The lower box of "Disk Management" shows the following from left to right:

System Reserve 100 MB NTFS(Healthy Primary); 96 MB Unallocated; C: 931.31 GB NTFS Healthy(System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)

The upper box of "Disk Management" shows an icon that looks like a metal brief case, then "(C:). Simple, Basic, NTFS, Healthy, 442.31 GB's.

The second metal briefcase icon below that shows, System Reserved, "Simple, Basic, NTFS, Healthy, 100 MB, 70 MB of free space.

Can "System Reserved" safely be deleted in order to expand "C:/"?

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IMHO the best option is to use a partition manager bootdisk.

You may use i.e "Partition Wizard". Its freeware image for Windows 7 (to be burnt using Nero or any similar program to create a boot CD) can be downloaded from www.partitionwizard.com/download.html

Don't touch the System Reserve 100 MB NTFS partition! It controls all others and your computer wouldn't work at all afterwards.

HTH

Edited by cannie
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  • 2 weeks later...

I have installed Win 7, Ultimate 64 on my own PC and I don't have such a protected partition, so what's up with that? Where did it come from? I have partitioned my HD before installing W-7, just like I'd do with any other OS (into two partitions...one for the OS and one for Storage)

I won't do anything to my HD from within windows (any version). (repartition it, or back it up)

I always use a boot CD. That takes windows out of the equation and makes it easier to do what I want without interference, or errors.

B)

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I have installed Win 7, Ultimate 64 on my own PC and I don't have such a protected partition, so what's up with that? Where did it come from? I have partitioned my HD before installing W-7, just like I'd do with any other OS (into two partitions...one for the OS and one for Storage)

This is normal. :)

In a nutshell if you install Windows 7 on a non-partitioned drive it will creatre it's own hidden/reserved/system partition (now 100 Mb, was 200 Mb in earlier beta), if you install it on a pre-partitioned hard disk it will behave "normally", WITHOUT creating that partition.

@robertplant

Please make a copy of your MBR, compress it in a .zip file and post it as attachment.

You can use HDhacker:

http://dimio.altervista.org/eng/

You want to save first sector of your first PhysicalDrive (\\.\PhysicalDrive0), Read sector from disk/Save sector to File.

jaclaz

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Thank you for your interest, jaclaz.

hdhacker was downloaded and a copy of the MBR is attached as a notepad document.

cannie, I really I had read your post deleting that 70 MB System Reserved partition, but so far, no harm seems to have been done.

Perhaps the install CD can be used to repair the damage.

New Text Document.txt

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hdhacker was downloaded and a copy of the MBR is attached as a notepad document.

...which corrupted the MBR. :whistle:

It's a binary file, you cannot copy and paste or save from a text editor!

Read the file with hdhacker.

Save the fie with hdhacker (naming it like "MBRdisk0.bin")

DO NOT OPEN it with notepad ir ANY other text editor, actually DO NOT open it.

Compress MBRdisk0.bin to MBRdisk0.zip.

Attach MBRdisk0.zip.

jaclaz

Edited by jaclaz
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jaclaz, sorry for the mistake, but as you can tell, I am a little new at this.

the only option offered was saving this file as a .rar, which has been attached to this post.

cannie, thank you VERY(!) much for the suggestion.

Now the HD is totally usable.

Oh! And there is no need to create a bootable CD.

Just click on the desktop icon, and tell it what partition to delete.

It puts the PC into "Boot Mode", and does it's thing in about 8 hours, and its seems to have been done without any glitch or hitch.

MBR_HardDisk0.rar

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There are several companies that have created partition management programs that work very well with Windows 7/64.

One I've tried lately is Acronis Disk Director and the other is Easeus Partition Master (Manager) 6.5.1 Home.

Both can be had for FREE, (legally) if you just look around.

Cheers and Good Luck,

B)

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