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Disk Director not expanding partition

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I purchased the Acronis Disk Director Suite the other day for the purpose of expanding my Windows Vista Ultimate system partition, which in hind site I made a bit too small (50 GB). I have purchased Windows 7 and want to upgrade, so I definitely need the system partition to be larger and I *really* don't want to re-install everything, so I bought ADDS. I have been a customer of Acronis through True Image for some time and like that product. However...

I have two partitions; one @ 50 GB for Windows and another at around 450 GB for data. My intention was to use ADDS to reduce the data partition by about 50 GB and then extend the system partition by the same amount. ADDS allows me to go through the motions of doing this and then appears to apply the changes via the COMMIT process, but after re-boot, the darn disk situation is the same as when I started.

I cannot get hold of Acronis Support. I even paid for a PPI and called the number but they are not answering. Does anyone know what might be my problem? Am I doing something wrong or is this a problem with ADDS?? Please inquire about any information that you might need to diagnose this situation. I'm at the end of my rope, here.

Thank you!
Scott T. Harder

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Scott:

Vista (and Windows 7) do not like their system partitions to be messed with while the OS is running. You can get the process to succeed by booting to the Acronis recovery CD and doing the operation while Vista is shut down.

If you have not yet created a recovery CD use the Bootable Media Builder application on the Tools menu. Include both the "full" and "safe" mode versions on the boot CD. The full-mode version is fully featured and the underlying operating system is Linux. The safe mode version is DOS-based and does not have all features, but should be fine for partitioning an internal disk. You would use safe mode version if the full mode version does not work, which can happen if you have new hardware that does not yet have Linux driver support.

Before doing any partition operation it is highly recommended to have a current backup.

Mark,

Thanks so much. Yes... the very first thing I did was to take a full backup via True Image before launching into this whole thing. I have a True Image Recovery CD, but have not made one via ADDS. I will do that and proceed as you suggest. Thanks again for your words of wisdom. I'll let you know how this goes.

Scott T. Harder

Hi Mark and everyone,

I created the ADDS bootable CD, but when I boot from it; it takes me to a command-line interface. I have no earthly clue as to what the allowed commands are. Does this mean I need to use the safe mode option?

Thanks!
Scott T. Harder

Scott:

Probably yes. There must be some hardware driver issue with full-mode. Try safe mode.

Hey Mark!

This thread is now officially entitled "Mark is the man!". Not without a couple of problems, I was able to resize my system partition using the safe mode selection off the ADDS boot disk, as you suggested. Just as an FYI, the issues I had were:

1) When the COMMIT operation finished, it didn't finish very clean. In fact, it locked up the computer. I let it sit there for a while before unloading the CD and rebooting.

2) When I rebooted from C:, Windows was entirely confused and needed a Repair. Once I ran the repair by booting off my install disk, all was well.

Thank you, again, for all of your help. I am now going to start my Windows 7 upgrade; given that I now have a nice big system partition. ;-)

Take Care,
Scott T. Harder