coffeejunky

Hi all,
I foolhardily put my version of vista on an extended partition, as I was in a hurry to try it out, and already had 3 physical partitions , I understand this is generally considered a bad thing to do but WHY?...anyway, another problem was that I made the partition too small as well. (total mess up on my part )
Anyway i've put up with it for a couple of weeks, and have all my programs installed. I have have few questions.

1. Does the shrink/expand partition feature of vista disk management risk any of my files (they are backed up but I don't want any hassle)

2. Also SHOULD I convert the extended partition to a physical/primary one or just leave it alone, well alone?

3. How can I convert my extended partition to a physical one, I understand Acronis Disk Director can do this, but will it do it on the trial version?, and will it obliterate my data.

4. Finally If I create a new physical partition, and clone the vista disk over using WD tools will it mess up my Vista boot thingy (BCD)

If you need any more info, just ask.
I look forward to your responses

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Coma

I'm not sure if you can convert it, but shrink and expand won't destroy anything. Also note that in order to expand a partition, there must be free space after where the partition ends (physically, and also in the list order)... if the list shows free space and THEN this partition and no free space after it, you can't expand it.

You can delete any partitions after it (losing any files on them) and expanding the partition before them to their total (and the partition's previous) size.

coffeejunky

Thanks for the reply, Acronis can convert it providing there are no more that 2 other physical partitions, whether it will obliterate my data, I don't know. I do have free space after it (if I shrink my XP partition). I'm thinking maybe just to start again and do alot of cloning to and from my slave HDD.

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