Cant Resize Partition Even With Free Space Available

Enigma

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I have a 200 gig partition on 1 drive that I have dedicated for games. But now it is filled, and even after shrinking my C drive to make space, I find that I still cannot extend my games partition. I've done a little reading and it appears that the issue is due to the free space not being directly beside the Games partition. I'm not sure, exactly, all I know is, I want to install more games and this technicality is preventing it.

Another thing that makes the situation more complex is that I have 2 other partitions on my drive that belong to Linux Mint. One is the main Mint partition, the other is a swap partition (similar to the page/swap file in Windows). I'm hesitant to try to mess around with moving those partitions since I'm not very experienced with Linux and if it doesnt boot I know I'll just reinstall it instead of trying to fix it. But I would like to avoid that in the first place.

I have tried with Disk Management, EaseUS, Paragon, Partition Wizard and GParted in Linux but they all wont let me make the games partition bigger, only smaller.

What I would like to do is to find a way to add free space to the Games partition, but without deleting other partitions or having to reinstall Linux. And more importantly, figuring out how to handle this kind of thing now so that I wont have issues extending partitions in the future. I also just figured I would say that I've converted the Games partition from primary to logical, due to the limitation of 4 primary partitions on a drive (maybe I'm wrong , but that's what I've heard). I say this because I recently had 4 primaries before trying to install Mint and Ubuntu, and neither of them would let me install. But as soon as I reduced to 3 primaries the issue went away and I was allowed to proceed. I figured that out after a bit of reading.

It is possible to move partitions on a disk so that they will be adjacent (either to the left or right) to another partition that needs to be extended?

I'm also posting a screenshot to make it easier for people to understand. The 36 gig partition is Linux's main partition, and the 15 gig partition to the right of it is Linux's swap partition. The pic also shows that both of those lie between the C drive and my games.

Well, if anyone can advise me on this then I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!
 

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Bump.....
 

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Just figured I would update by saying that I installed Windows 8 first, shrank the C drive by 200 gigs, then created a new partition, assigned it a drive letter of G, and a volume label of 'Games'. Most of the games on the drive are from Steam, and 1 from Origin. Those can be easily moved. The others would have to be reinstalled if I delete the drive to accomplish what I want to do. After that I then installed Mint and it gave itself 2 partitions, one for the main Linux installation and another partition for swap. The Linux partition is obviously flagged as bootable, and I have GRUB installed as my bootloader, so I assume that it would have to be next to the C drive (but maybe not, I'm just not sure). After I installed Linux I booted into 8, and then filled up the Games drive, only to discover now that I cannot figure out a way to make it bigger.Hence my current situation.

Thanks for any help, I'm just eager to get this resolved.
 

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Please don't bump messages any more frequently than once every few days.
 

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Please don't bump messages any more frequently than once every few days.

Thanks for the help, but they do have a tendency to get "lost" with everyone posting so often, once it goes beyond the first page you're even less likely to get help. I've been trying to figure this out all day, and short of reinstalling everything (not even sure if that would work), I'm just at a loss as to what to do. I've already ruined one HDD by constantly installing and reinstalling Windows/Linux, and I just bought this drive, I'm determined to not let the same thing happen to it by putting it under too much stress. The last one failed in under 6 months.
 

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    Windows 8.1 Pro x64, Windows Server 2012 R2 x64
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    Intel Core i7-3632QM, 2.20 GHz
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    Lenovo
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    6 GB DDR3
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    NVIDIA 720M, Intel HD 4000
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You can't ruin a hard drive by reinstalling the OS. Even SSD's have thousands of write cycles. I've reinstalled and formatted my current SSD at least 50 times so far without any issues, not to mention just normal usage.

Being stressed is not an excuse to be annoying.
 

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I'd be willing to bet you didnt install several hundred times + like I did (almost once every day or more). I just kept making mistakes, and instead of trying to fix them, I just figured that a clean reinstall would be best. It makes sense (to me) that writing an OS(es) to a HDD repeatedly can potentially ruin it over time. Maybe the drive was inferior to begin with, or flawed (Seagate Momentus solid state hybrid). And it kept crashing with all manner of myriad issues and errors, which oftentimes forced me to do a hard reboot. All I know is that it failed, which is atypical for an HDD.
 

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I have tried for 2 years to get rid of that 40 MB partition. I finally did it with AOMEI Partition Assistant.
Disk.JPG
Disk2.JPG
 

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@ Clint: Thanks for the post, but I'm not sure how/if it will help me with my problem.

Right now I'm testing out a theory, which is to copy all the files on the Games partition to an external drive, delete the partition, and then resize the C drive by around 200 gigs or so, which would be about the same or slightly bigger than the size of my current Games partition. Then I'm going to create a new partition in the free space called Games, copy all the files back over to it and get everything working properly on it. The hope is that the newly created Games partition will be beside (to the right, I think) of the C drive, but BEFORE the Linux partition and the Linux swap partition. That way I *SHOULD* be able to continually and gradually make the Games partition bigger as needed. Please, can someone take a look and my screenshot and visualize what I've said, and tell me if it will work. I'm thinking it might, since the Linux partitions already exist now, whereas they (Linux) wasnt there at the time I originally created the Games partition. So maybe that affected the placement of it on the drive,hence my inability to extend it even despite shrinking the C drive and having free space. Right or wrong?

Thanks for any help!
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro x64, Windows Server 2012 R2 x64
    Computer type
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    System Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo G700
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    Intel Core i7-3632QM, 2.20 GHz
    Motherboard
    Lenovo
    Memory
    6 GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA 720M, Intel HD 4000
    Monitor(s) Displays
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    1600x900 (max)
    Hard Drives
    1 TB HDD (5400 RPM), 1.5 TB HDD (5400 RPM) installed in a 12.7mm disc drive caddy
    Case
    Lenovo
    Keyboard
    Lenovo
    Mouse
    Laptop/notebook keyboard/touchpad
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    It varies, since I'm mobile most of the time
    Browser
    Chromium (the open-source browser which Google Chrome is derived from)
    Antivirus
    Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, Spybot, Privatefirewall
    Other Info
    I will add more information here later
You should download and burn the Minitool Partition Wizard Boot CD -- and boot from it.

It's a general-purpose partitioning utility and gives you a lot more flexibility that messing around with Disk Management.
 

My Computer

The problem with mine was it was a Dynamic Disk. None of the free programs would work on that. I got the AOMEI Partition Assistant and that converted it to a Basic disk. The 40MB partition was a FAT 12. I have never heard of that. I converted that to a NTFS. Then I merged the 2 partitions together to make one. It worked for me when nothing else would.
 

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suggestion: assign a temporary drive letter to it and then run Disk Defrag. You get to Windows defrag and Checkdisk/Scandisk by:
  1. Computer
  2. Display Properties page for a disk/drive
  3. Tools tab

Disk defrag may catch and isolate HD sectors. So before you run disk defrag, do a msdos command: Dir C: / Dir D:, whatever applies. ...to see the original size of the drive before defragging

You can do this in Win8 by:
  1. Charms
  2. Search
  3. type 'command' without the quotes
  4. type

  • dir c:\*.*/s
  • or dir d:\*.*/s
whatever applies in the black box/command prompt - when this completes, you will see at the bottom how much space all the files are taking, and how much free space exists on the drive. The actual number probably doesn't matter. You just want to see if it changes afterwards.

Run defrag on said disk.

Then of course repeat the 'dir' command after to see if the numbers have changed.

Auslogics Defrag program from download.com is also a good program. It's free and pretty comprehensive.
 

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Copy everything off of the partitions in question, delete them all (so that you get a continuous unallocated block) and then repartition that block.
 

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Misinformative, obviously disgruntled uber-user

You can't ruin a hard drive by reinstalling the OS. Even SSD's have thousands of write cycles. I've reinstalled and formatted my current SSD at least 50 times so far without any issues, not to mention just normal usage.

Being stressed is not an excuse to be annoying.

Your response is unacceptable. You gave every reason you know why it is impossible to ruin a HDD by reinstallation of an OS, but completely swept the fact that his MBR was likely corrupt under the rug. You also ignored the fact that since this guy was multi-booting, he was clearly using multiple file systems. That's a given, especially since we know that he was using NTFS (Microsoft's ridiculous, proprietary file system) and AT LEAST fat32. Maybe even EXT4, depending on his version on Linux Mint.

Newsflash: No one in this world will learn anything if the ones with the technical knowledge are so... TECHNICAL when it comes to troubleshooting.

It's unfair that prolific posters are considered experts, and even more so when *I* see that the "PowerUser" blatantly ignores a well-known problem to take the chance to flex their "elite" skills and/or knowledge. Attack of the Sperglords!

Yes, I am necro-posting. Yes, I will likely be banned for this comment; however, you knew you were simply belittling the poor guy. It may be that you just post blog spam such as this to "level up" in these forums, who knows, save for you? If you had earned the right to give asinine replies to newbies, calling them "annoying" simply because they needed help, then you'd likely be a sysadmin of some kind, and never even bother being such a tool. Leave that trifling to the "annoying" and "frustrated" people who kneel at your throne of 1337n3ss. Make the IT department do it; you've got SERVERS to maintain.

It's not personal. The problem here is the SlashDot effect, the Reddit effect, etc. Your response was in no way helpful, and even condescending. But, everyone wants their stupid f###ing opinion to be heard once they've trolled long enough.

Pro Tip/TL;DR: Ditch Windows and go right ahead and switch to Debian. Their forums are a haven for people like you.
 

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You joined just to comment on a post that's over a year old?
 

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