Hard Drive Formatting "for all available space"

[airboatr]

sure did Jim, but I isn't allowed.The option to expand under D: is greyed out
the only partition on the drive that allowed me to expand to was C: .. so I did... now it's back like before
with the three partitions, and Now I have just installed even more updates today from
MS update SP1 and SP2 for vista and explorer 8 , I think that brings the grand total to about 100
one :roll: hundred (this must be one of the first vista disks that left the factory from gateway or MS..............whom ever )

and all manually installed ...
....my butt cheeks is sore now :lazy:

[forthbridge]

:think:

Looks like a no-goer then :think: must be due to some logic I'm not aware of.... is it an original Vista disk, or a 'recovery' image?

If so the partitions are 'there' so to speak. Unless you had a total of 180 gig (say) between D and E I'm not too sure there's a lot you can do without the risk of causing problems to the Boot partition.....

[airboatr]

Hi Jim

trying a work around , by deleting the D: partition and the making a new one which should allocate the unallocated part of
C: ........ if it dosn't work then it's shotgun city.
click click ;-)

[airboatr]

sorry JIm , i forgot to answer your question

it's not a original Vista disk from MS , it's Gateways offering with the computer
which has vista and the few accessories like dvd maker and paint stuff like that
but no word program or anything, not even the drivers . so I had to install this usb wifi adapter's driver
I have and use that hardware (Hawkings) so I could connect to the internet and then get my updates from Gateway
like the audio driver and the wifi ectect.. so I couod then use the built in wifi gateway built into this one.
crimanny, so I have all the updates for Vista and the drivers all installed . I'm going to run this setup for a few more days
to make sure windows update hasn't over looked anything, and I hope to get the works word program install
do the image of the drive .. so that Next time I'll spare myself the pain of rebuilding vista from 2007 .................


The other disk I have (seven of them ) installs everything , so it's like the day I bought it.
but I'd rather not, not only do I have to install all the updates , but I have to uninstall all the lard they packed onto it.

[airboatr]

ok well back on this boring project..

I found a program called imagedrive xml and it imaged the drivepartition nicely
but i need to test it before I can give it a thumbs up
I have migrated from formatting to burning a image of my drive I know.
but that was something I needed to do (the formatting) before I did my reinstall......
I still havn't installed any programs as of yet , I want the image to be just Vista and all the updates
upto now , 8-2-09 :doho: 2-8-09..... look It's August 2 , two thousand nine alright?
anyway, I'm figuring it out. and that's good.

[forthbridge]

HI Joe

Good luck.... I'm not up on imaging software (if it's imaged Windows does it include the whole partition?)..... at the moment the main thing is you have a useable system ;-)

[airboatr]

HI Joe

Good luck.... I'm not up on imaging software (if it's imaged Windows does it include the whole partition?)..... at the moment the main thing is you have a useable system ;-)

Hi JIm
I have an answer for you (and all)

Imagedrive XML Works! and the free version does the job
http://imagedrive-xml.qarchive.org/ (scroll down for the free one).
you'll see the pro version is 139.00...

what I did was this.

I installed Vista got it all updated and then waited 2 days for any left overs that the updater might have missed giving me.

installed imagedrive xml .on that same drives partition. I used the default settings only imaging the sectors of the used part of the drive , (not the whole drive)

and about 25 minutes later I had the image. (and this is running on the installed HD!)

Last night I deleted the smallest of the 3 partitions and added it to the D: partition.

removed the drive from the laptop , reinstalled my original working drive and ran imagedrive xml

and restored the new drive which took an hour or so, .......really , I don't know , I went to bed bumped my head and didn't wake up untill morning.

then :roll: this morning I switch the HD's and i got an error on boot . the bootmanager was missing . so I inserted the vista disk and that lil malfunction was
quickly rectified. and Voilà I was back to the updated vista I had just had 10 hours earlier, all my settings ect.,

one bit of advice ... Install a clean version of the OS of your choice on the smallest partition possible, then get all your updates for the OS
((My file size of the image of Vista with updates was about 6 gigs )) the important part of this is that the size of the partition
you took the image from. will require a partition of equal or larger you install it on. SO I am going to do this all over again on a small partition.
then I'll wipe the drive . partition to my needs needs and reinstall.

I had a webpage that gave me a good start on doing this , but I can't find it. I think I wiped it when I did the reinstall

Thanks for reading , hope this will help someone.

Joe

PS .. still don't get all the HD , missing about 22 gigs.. it's a 320 but I only get 298
:-(