I have an 80GB 7200rpm/8mb Western Digital Hdd broken into 4 partitions. Boot partition is just over 5gb and has approx 900mb remaining. I have removed all un-needed programs and also had to remove java sun just to get enough space to defrag.

I'm freeing up 4gb of space on one of the other partitions and would like to expand the boot partition to 9gb but am not sure which is the best software for this.

I looked into partition magic but have seen many negative reports. Claims that it "mucks up NTFS file systems" or causes other problems. I don't need to clone partitions or drives now...just expand the boot partition.

I researched Acronis True Image a while ago and have read it does a better job than Partition Magic...but have also read a few negative reports on true image. Plus I've read that true image now charges for maintenance.

I also have a 200gb seagate drive in the same pc broken into 5 partitions all for photo and video storage
but I don't think that should affect partitioning of the primary drive. Would be nice to be able to use whatever partitioning software I buy for the large drive too. I've read partition magic can't handle a drive this large but don't know if its true or ppl just don't know how to use it. The largest partition in the 200gb drive is currently 159gb.

Anyone have suggestions how to non destructively enlarge the boot partition in the 80gb primary drive and which is the most trouble free software to do this?

Thanks
Dave

mmm - I think you'll get a plethora of views on this one...

System Commander usually has/had good reviews with most M$ OS - upto W2K inclusive; and also with XP. My brief experience with it was OK (upto '98/NT).

PM was generally OK with '9x, "so so" for some folks with NT (M$ have a couple of KB in that regard); and with W2K it "appeared" to be OK - as long as it was PM5 or later...?

There is also a partitioning util on the Knoppix (Linux on a CD ) CD package... And the O'Reilly Knoppix Hacks handbook includes details about it...

There was (still is?) the Ranish partitioning util. It got good reviews by those who used it - upto W2K at least?

In all cases it essential to backup/store off the drive completely all critical files (data etc...); and to verify those backups/copies are viable etc. - before proceeding with any tweaking of drive partitions...

My suggestion would be to use cloning software. Don't do disk to disk but partition to partition. This will allow you to expand the presend 5gig partition to a larger size. Then partition to partition the remainer three partitions until you utilize the entire disk.

Understand that if you add or delete partitions on the primary drive your drive letter assignments to the secondary drive will change. This may cause serious problems if registry pointers to that drive letter are now invalid. I would suggest you maintain the present partitioning scheme but just resize via cloning.

Don't even consider this without a good backup

Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

Why don't you try windows?
Right clck my computer/manage/disk managment.
You have a disk management program that will not allow you to kill itself,
God luck

??? Disk Management does not allow partition tweaking/resizing on the fly along the lines of SC/PM/Ranesh/Knoppix-util/Acronis etc...- i.e. with data "preserved"... True it will tend to discourage (disallow...) you to mess with the (boot) partition containing the OS itself, whereas the utils (as discussed already) will allow it... with the caveats in mind re' data etc...