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Moving OS Partition on same disk

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ATI 2015 for PC Build 6525
The Boot drive in my PC has 3 partitions, in order: Win 7 32 bit, data, Win 7 64 bit.
I'm permanently using the 64 bit OS now and its nearly filled its partition. Because its the last partition on the disk I can't extend it, so I need to move it to the 32 bit partition when I can then delete the "middle" data partition and extend the now 64 bit partition, finally removing the old 64 bit partition.
I've tried restoring the 64 bit partition from the Secure Zone into the 32 bit partition. This appeared to work, but my PC wouldn't boot. I then restored the MBR and was then able to boot, only to discover that the 32 bit partition hadn't in fact been restored .... this baffled me somewhat!
If the restore, etc. had worked, I was then going to use Dual Boot Pro to let me attempt booting from the 32 bit (now 64 bit) partition and fix all my partition size problems.
My question is (or questions are):
Should the above have worked?
Should I have restored the MBR with the partition? (restores in the past have never worked unless I restored the whole of the disk - all 3 partitions plus MBR)
Can anybody suggest a better solution?
Many thanks.
PS. I'm not a great techie, so please go easy on me!

0 Users found this helpful

Do you have the Windows installation DVD?

Yes. But I've solved my problem! Why I didn't think of this method first time I don't know!!

I installed a spare SATA drive. Restored the OS to it. Used Dual Boot pro to make the drive bootable and the system dual bootable!
Booted from spare SATA drive and made sure everything appeared to be working OK.
Cloned the spare SATA drive to the original boot disk.
Rebooted and now everything perfect.

OK, because I would have guided you to use a tool like AESUS Partition Manager (free for home use) to arrange your disk the want you want, and then use the Windows DVD to fix the boot records in case it would be needed, or use your favorite boot manager for dual boot.

Thanks very much for the tip. It's always useful to have a good Partition Manager (I assume you meant EaseUS!)