gparted 0.3.4-9 question

[stopthekilling77]

to dual boot my existing XP with Vista 64 bit, i created a partition with Gparted to install Vista in. now i'm running out of space with all the updates i've had to download, and i'd like to add more space to the Vista partition.
now i have 4 partitions, 1 for xp, 1 for vista, 1 for general storage, and another i created ahead of time for whenever i get my linux distro cds.
in addition to those partitions, ive got two 5~6Gb bits of unallocated storage space. i want to add both of them to the vista partition, but i cant expand the vista partition, and neither can i allocate those unallocated bits!!! what gives?
do i need to format those unallocated parts to NTFS format? thats the only thing i can think of...

[dkarko]

I dont know gparted. What i use and trust is Acronis!
Download Hiren's boot cd, boot from it, load partitioning tools, select Acronis and do whatever you want.
You can also use Partition magic, but i think it has problems in XP SP2/vista so you try it only from withing Hiren's boot cd (It boots dos and makes a ramdisk)

Note though that moving partitions can take alot of time! Since lots of gb have to be moved.
So make sure you don't touch the system while you are moving partitions!

Now something logical you could do with gparted or any partition manager would be to format the unallocated space to the format of the nearest partition and merge it with it. Then resize the merged partition BUT do so from the beginning, creating an unallocated space on the left (takes time!). This way you move the unallocated space next to the vista partition and merge it with it!

[DMB2000uk]

It's a shame you can't get a picture of the partition layout to make it easier to understand what is going on.

Now something logical you could do with gparted or any partition manager would be to format the unallocated space to the format of the nearest partition and merge it with it.

This sounds like good advice, though I'm not sure how it would effect data currently on the partitions when using gparted.

Dan

[stopthekilling77]

Now something logical you could do with gparted or any partition manager would be to format the unallocated space to the format of the nearest partition and merge it with it. Then resize the merged partition BUT do so from the beginning, creating an unallocated space on the left (takes time!). This way you move the unallocated space next to the vista partition and merge it with it!

exaaaaaaaaactly! i used Gparted for it, and it only took it about an hour and a half to move the free space from one side of a large third partition to where i needed it, at the end of my second one. i really had been thinking "there's free space on one end, why can't i add it" when i should have been thinking in a linear way, that the space had to be contiguous before it became available. god my common sense had to kick in! thanks for the help!

it was definitely my "D'oh!" moment of the month