With Windows xp or early version operating system, you need to use 3rd party utility such as Partition Magic to resize a partition. Now if you are using Vista or Windows 7, you don't need 3rd party utility to resize partition because Windows Vista or Windows 7 has partition, or volume, resizing functionality built directly into the Disk Management utility. When resizing volumes in Windows Vista or Windows 7, you should keep the following in your mind:
1. You only have the ability to shrink or expand NTFS or RAW (unformatted) partitions using Windows Vista tools.
2. When you shrink a partition, unmovable files such as a page file or a shadow copy storage area are not relocated. Therefore you cannot decrease the size of the Windows volume beyond where these types of files are located. If you need to further shrink the volume, you will need to remove, move, or delete the page file or shadow copy storage area first, then shrink the volume, and then add the page file or shadow copy storage area back to the drive.
3. If enough bad clusters are found on the disk the partition will not be allowed to shrink.
4. You must be logged into an Administrator account in order to resize Windows Volumes .
To shrink partitions or volumes, do the following:
1. Click on the Start and then click on the Control Panel.
2. click on the System and Maintenance category.
3. Scroll down and click on Administrative Tools.
4. Double-click on the Computer Management.
5. Click on the Disk Management. From this utility you can see all the partitions on your computer and format, delete, create, expand, or resize them.
6. To shrink the partition, you simply need to right click on the partition you want to work with and select the Shrink option.
7. Follow instructions to finish Shrink.
To extend partitions or Volumes, do the following:
1. Click on the Start and then click on the Control Panel.
2. Click on the System and Maintenance category.
3. Scroll down and click on Administrative Tools.
4. Double-click on the Computer Management icon.
5. Click once on the Disk Management icon.
6. To expand the partition, you simply need to right click on the partition you want to work with and select the Extend option.
7. Press the Next button to continue.
8. A new screen will appear that allows you to select the available free space on your local drives that you can use to extend the space of the selected partition. It is important to note that Windows Vista allows you to extend a volume using free space on the same drive as well as other drives. I suggest that you do not extend a volume on one disk with free space from another. This is because if one of the drives has a hardware failure, then all the data on that volume will be deleted. Instead only use the free space on a drive that contains the volume you are extending.
9. Follow the on-screen instructions to finish expanding partition.
With the ability to extend and shrink a partition using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you no longer need to worry about finding a third party utility.
