Hello.  Can anyone help me with some questions about Win 7 and Disc Management.
 
I hope to add some room to my system partition.
 
Q. 1:  Will Disc Management allow me to re-size my C:\ partition?  Or do I need a 3rd party partition tool?
 
Q. 2:  My physical drive is divided into 3 partitions: C:\ is 50 GB, D:\ is 200 GB, and E:\ is 200.  My understanding of Disc Management is that it will allow an increase of a partition into a contiguous drive region.  So if I want to enlarge C:\, does that mean I need to shrink the D:\ partition? 
 
Can anyone advise me on this?
 
Thanks.  

Disk management will not expand a partition except into contiguous (physically adjacent) unallocated space, so if your C: and D: partitions are next to each other on the disk, you will need to move the starting location for that partition over so that the space between end of C: and beginning of D: is as large as you need to expand your C: drive and is unallocated i.e. not formatted, and not even included within a partition. Having accomplished that, Disk Managment can expand the C: partition into that unallocated space. So yes you will need to shrink or delete the D: partiton to expand the C: partition, and the process must create the new unallocated space between the C: and D: partiton. Disk management can shrink a partition limited by the partiton free space (no data) and the location of immovable files on the partiton.

Thanks for your helpful answer. Now how do I know whether my C: and D: partitions are next to each other on the physical disk?  And in shrinking the D: partition, how do I make sure space is created between C: and D:, and not between D: and E:?
 
On my computer, Disk Management presents a graphic of the physical hard as a long rectangle divided into three side-by-side squares: C: is drawn on the left, D: is in the middle, and E: is on the right.  So if this graphic correctly depicts the physical HD, then the C: and D: partitions are physically adjacent.
 
So I think I know how to use Disk Management to shrink the D: partition (and there is plenty of unused  space in the partition to allow the shrinkage).  When I shrink the D: partition, how do I make sure I am moving the starting location of the D: partition, and not moving the ending location of the D: partition instead?

i wrestled with this a couple of years ago and determined that the easiest thing to do was to buy a new drive and install the OS and software I needed.  You could also make an image of your C-drive and copy that to the new disk.
 
The lesson I learned is that partitions are usually more trouble than they are worth.
 
if you do try to move the partitions - good luck.

Hey dw - thanks for the reply.
 
It might be easier for me to delete my D: partition, expand the C: partition as needed, and then re-allocate whatever space is left over into a new smaller partition.  But by now, I have data files (samples and such) in the D: partition that other programs are using.
 
This is my home-built DAW.  I outfitted it with two physical HD (500 GB apiece), divided into 5 partitions.  I figured that 50 GB would be big enough for the system partition, but I overlooked the fact that the Win 7 OS and Sonar would use roughly 40 GB of that space.  And after installing some other musical apps, I'm now down to 6 GB in the system partition.
 
So I got plenty of disk space, but I'm worried I'm running out of room in the system partition.

BbAltered
 
It might be easier for me to delete my D: partition, expand the C: partition as needed, and then re-allocate whatever space is left over into a new smaller partition.  But by now, I have data files (samples and such) in the D: partition that other programs are using.
 

 
I think that by default shrinking your D: drive will produce unallocated space that is not contiguous with C:, but will appear in the bar graph to the right of D:. So yes the easiest way to control the new partition would be to copy the D: partition data (using a copy process that preserves the directory structure of D:) somewhere else where you have room, then delete the D: partition, then expand the C: partition into the unallocated space left by deleteing D:. You can then set up a new D: partition in the remaining unallocated space, or any other location that has unallocated space. During the format phase of creating your new partition you will be given the option to assign a name to the new partition, just call it D:, and all of your existing data from D: can then be copied back onto the new D: disk and your programs will all be able to find it where they expect it to be. You can even if you like make a new directory entry in one of your other partitions  name the directory something you will recall (E:\vDisk1 say) and then create a virtual disk (a data file that looks like a hard drive to Windows)  and name the virtual disk D: and it will have the same result as recreating a normal D: partition as far as the software that is looking for its data on D: is concerned.  
 
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/5291/how-to-create-a-virtual-hard-drive-in-windows-7/
 
To attach the virtual hard drive automatically at startup:
http://www.overclockedtechies.com/2012/02/attach-vhd-on-startup-automatically/
 
 
 

One way to expand space on a drive letter is to a mount another drive or partition to an empty link directory on the system drive. This isn't exactly regular procedure in the Windows world, but it's done in the Unix world all the time in order keep a single unified storage view. Windows NT has had this capability for a long time.

SuperG makes a good point, if all you need is more space on "Drive C:" you can do it by mounting a directory on another drive or partition to extend the C: logical drive to that location. You could achieve a similar effect by using links. These methods may require some special handling in making disk images or backups that work the way you expect them to, so be careful.
 
http://www.sysprobs.com/e..d-drive-windows-7-space
 
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/278262-mklink-create-use-links-windows.html
 

Hello.  Thanks slart and SuperG for your suggestions.  Yeah, I think if I need more space in my C: partition is to refer to a location on another partition.  This is easier, IMO.
 
It's kinda funny to think of 6 GB drive space as "small".  IIRC, in my first DAW, the physical HDs were measured in MBs  (of course, back then, it was mostly midi data getting saved).