Windows 7 / Getting Started

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Alternatives to Disk Management

The Disk Management utility is not your only choice when it comes to repartitioning drives, but as far as the tools included with Windows 7 are concerned, it's the best one.

The other usable alternative is 7's DiskPart utility (diskpart.exe), a way of viewing, adding, and removing partitions from the Command Prompt; see the upcoming "The DiskPart Command-Line Tool" for a walkthrough.

In the good old days-also known simply as the old days-the only way to resize partitions without deleting the data on them was to use a program called PartitionMagic. But since Symantec bought PartitionMagic and ruined it, the best choice now is Acronis Disk Director, available at http://www.acronis.com/. If you want a free partition editor, try EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition, available at http://www.partition-tool.com/, but keep in mind that it only supports 32-bit Windows (the Professional edition, which costs money, supports x64).

To move partitions, delete EISA Configuration volumes, and more, use a partition editor like Acronis Disk Director

Among other things, partition editors like Disk Director and Partition Master let you move partitions, resize from the left (beginning) or right (end), and delete otherwise undeletable partitions, such as the EISA Configuration volumes discussed earlier in this section.

If you're using 64-bit Windows and want a free partition editor, you can use QTParted, the partition editor that comes with Linux. Now, you don't have to install Linux, but rather only boot off a Linux Live CD like the one available at http://iso.linuxquestions.org/mepis/. It supports NTFS as well as FAT32, and lets you freely resize partitions without destroying data. Alternatively, Gparted (free from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/) comes with its own dedicated Linux Live CD.

Any way you do it, it's always wise to back up before messing with your partitions.

The DiskPart Command-Line Tool

DiskPart is essentially the command-line equivalent to the Disk Management tool, and can be useful in certain situations (such as when Windows won't start).

You'll need to run DiskPart in administrator mode; one way to do this is to open your Start menu, type diskpart in the Search box, and then when diskpart.exe appears in the search results, right-click it and select Run as administrator.

Once it's running, type help at any time to see a list of commands. To get started, here's how to extend a volume in DiskPart:

1. At the DISKPART> prompt, type:
   list disk
   to display all the drives on your computer. Each drive will have a disk number, starting with 0 (zero).
2. Unless you have only one drive, you'll have to tell DiskPart which drive to use, like this:
   select disk n
   where n represents the number of the disk to modify.
3. Next, at the DISKPART> prompt, type:
   list volume
   to display all the volumes on the selected disk. Likewise, each volume has a volume number, starting with 0 (zero).
4. Regardless of the number of volumes on the drive, you'll have to tell DiskPart which one to use, like this:
   select volume 2
5. Now that you've selected the partition to expand, go ahead and issue this command:
   extend
   to extend the volume. The extend command takes no options and displays no warning message or confirmation. The process begins immediately after you press the Enter key, and should take only a few seconds.
6. When it's done, type exit to quit the DiskPart utility.