Partition question

[kylake]

I have a thinkpad R51 that was maxed out on a 30 gig hd. Santa was nice an brought me a new 120gig drive. I formated and cloned the new drive, no problem, and it is up and running in the TP.
The software I used to clone was True Image. It was easy and painless but I let it do the automatic thing and when it set up the partitions it gave the IBM rescue the same percentage it had on the old drive. Simply stated the IBM recovery now has 25 gig of the new drive on its side of the partition.
Now my question: Is there an easy in Windows XP pro to reduce the size of the partition the rescue side was alloted? I have looked in disk management but I haven't found a way yet?
BTW, the rescue side is in Fat32 and the side I would like to move the extra space to is NFTS

Thanks in advance for any help...

[carbon_unit]

There are two ways to fix this:

(1) You could use something like partition magic to resize the partitions.
(2) You could make a set of recovery cd's, save your data to some cd's and then use the recovery cd's to "restore to factory condition". That would make the proper size recovery partition and use the rest for windows.

#1 is quicker but more expexsive and has a possiblilty of total data loss.
#2 requires more effort but is cheaper and safer for your data. It also requires reinstalling all of your programs and re-doing all of your customizations. The clean install will also get rid of any existing problems you may have.

[bill bolton]

Now my question: Is there an easy in Windows XP pro to reduce the size of the partition the rescue side was alloted?

If you want easy, you'll need a third party disk management tool, like Acronis Disk Director, or Power Quest Partiton Magic etc.

Cheers,

Bill

[kylake]

Thank you both for your quick replies and I feel honored that you are both moderators and try to answer my feeble question.
Carbon, you number 2 sounds like a good idea but everything is up and running okay and I don't know if I am in for the task of reconfiguring everything....but you are correct a clean install is always nice.
Bill, the "True Image" software I used to clone is also an Acronis software program. I will look under disk management in that software and see if there is something there I can use to correct the size on the rescue partitioned side. I have a free (trial) use for 15 days. It did a great job on the clone and was very painless. It is the program that set the partition size in the automatic mode.....if I had tried manual mode I might could have set the size for the recovery side then???

Basically, I am pretty happy I could just install a new hd in an external enclosure, format, clone, swap drives and never run into any serious problems. I guess I am being picky by wanting more gigs on the operating side.

Thanks again both of you for all your help.

[Musti]

Now my question: Is there an easy in Windows XP pro to reduce the size of the partition the rescue side was alloted?

If you want easy, you'll need a third party disk management tool, like Acronis Disk Director, or Power Quest Partiton Magic etc.

Cheers,

Bill

Or this one in LiveCD flavour, which rocks. Musti tested and approved (hey, don't laugh)

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

[K0LO]

Larry:

There's also a little "trick" that you can use in Acronis TrueImage to redistribute the space between your two partitions.

Start TrueImage and choose "Manage Acronis Secure Zone". When asked which partition to take space from, choose the IBM Service Partition. Take the maximum amount of space possible from this partition. If asked, do not activate the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager.

After this operation has completed you will have three partitions; XP, the IBM Service Partition (which will be as small as possible), and a hidden Acronis Secure Zone.

Next start TrueImage and again choose "Manage Acronis Secure Zone". This time choose to delete the secure zone. When asked which partition to give the free space to, choose your XP partition.

You will end up with the XP partition as large as possible and the IBM Service partition as small as possible and you won't need any additional software to do this.

[kylake]

Larry:

There's also a little "trick" that you can use in Acronis TrueImage to redistribute the space between your two partitions.

Mark, thanks your instructions along with the Acronis TrueImage made it a painless/easy process with the exact results that I wanted.

Thanks also to everyone that read and suggested ideas.

I must give a big thumbs up on the TrueImage software for ease of use and efficency. To Mark for instructions on how to use it.