Is it possible to resize Windows 7 system reserved partition?

[Agustíne]

I have a Windows 7 installation on my system with a legacy partition. I would like to combine it with an existing Windows partition sooner then later. Currently the partition is at the front of the 100 MB system reserved partition that Windows 7 uses for Bitlocker. The only way i can do this is to delete the legacy partition and re-size the current reserved partition to absorb the legacy partition. Then reduce the newly enlarged system partition back to the 100 MB partition and add the new space to Windows partition. Is it possible to re-size a Windows 7 system reserved partition this way or will i mess up my installation? please help.

[Devasis]

Well there are 2 ways you can do this. Just delete the original legacy partition. Reboot and then expand the Windows 7 installed partition to fill the newly available space. This by far is the most stable way to do it. The partitions don't have to be necessarily contiguous. But as i said there is one more option as well. The second option would be to format the partition one. Using windows mount point then mount the new formatted partition with no drive letter as a part of the original operating system partition. To be honest though i think the best option is to wait till the time you have the need to reinstall and take that as a chance to remove the old legacy partition.

[Solomon]

It all depends on how big is the legacy partition that you want to merge it in. I assume it is a very big deal to just let it be and accept the small amount of wasted space on the hard drive. You can have volumes that are basically not contiguous. You could also use a third party software to merge 2 partitions in to one. That is a very simple way actually. Use a software like EASEUS Partition Master. It wont merge partitions directly because that can lead to data loss. to basically protect it you can use the resize and move functions of it.

[MrChris-]

Well actually Windows 7 disk management has the power to shrink or expand the partition according to the needs of the user. But there is one catch to it. It can only expand the partition when there is undefined or unallocated space behind the partition. As the system reserved partition is in front of the system partition, you cannot just use the disk management to expand it. You can use third party software to do this easily though. There is a good option mentioned in the above post regarding this purpose. But you can also use Windows 7 Partition Magic Software.Compared to the disk management of Windows 7, you will find it highly useful and much more efficient in a lot of things because of its features.

[Calvin K]

To answer your primary question, yes it is very much possible to do this. But i would advice you to use a third party software for this instead of disk management which has certain limitations. It will require you to delete the current partition to make way for the new partitions you will make. This obviously means loss of data and files. Partition Wizard is a useful tool in my opinion for this very purpose. It has various features such as moving, resizing, creating, deleting, formatting. You can also convert your file system, hide or make visible the partitions. There is a wizard with it which can guide you through the process of doing all this without causing any unnecessary damage to your data or the system. You basically have lots of options now in regards of third party software to do what you have set out to do.

[Lillebror]

Devasis i don't think what you have suggested will work and am not sure if the thread starter does try it then it will do the job safely. I myself was looking for ways to do what agustine is trying to do. Unnecessarily space is being wasted on my system by the system reserved partition and i am running out of space so might as well make use of the available, idle space. The 3 third party software's mentioned in the thread, all seem like good options. But i decided to go for Windows 7 Partition Magic Software. It particularly impressed me with its comparison graph against Windows disk management. Thanks guys for all your suggestions.

[lall]

It's quite long process and needs good knowledge of ghosting and partitioning.

But here it is:

I assume that W7 FIRST partition is the System Reserved (200MB) and SECOND is the OS partition.
Also you'll need:
*spare HDD with at least same amount of free space that your current W7 has used for OS.
*W7 recovery disk
*bootable Ghost11
*bootable partition editing tool (I like gparted on live CD)
*time (the whole process may take long time)

1)Take Ghost11, boot it from CD/DVD or USB (BartPE)

2)Clone your existing W7 partition to IMAGE(gho) on to the SPARE HDD. (Takes about 1h for 100GB image)

3)Boot PC up from Kubuntu (9.04 live cd) [or any other bootable partition editing tool]
In kubuntu, open terminal and insert "sudo apt-get install gparted". Accept the 24mb package. After install has finished, enter "sudo gparted". W/O quotes.
It doesn't matter what kind of method or program you'll use!!

4)DELETE your EXISTING W7 OS partition (no worries).

5)Select the 200MB partition (System Reserved) and re-size it as much you'll need.

6)Create new OS partition from unallocated disc space. Remember that it must be big enough for cloning your OS back in it! Save your changes (double check everything, including MB and MiB!!! They are different units, 200MB should be 191MiB)

7)Boot Ghost11, select the image and clone it back to your NEW OS partition.

8)Reboot. Windows will give you an error that winload is missing.

9)Insert W7 recovery disk. Reboot. Let the disk automatically fix your boot.
If it cannot succeed, open CMD from W7 Recovery disk, and insert "bootrec /fixmbr" and "bootrec /fixboot". Reboot.

Enjoy.