Partition a Drive while its in use?

[Sungaisu]

I have had this external TB connected to my work computer for months, and just now am realizing I'm only using 70-90gb on it and it's not being filled up. Right now it's mapped on numerous computers across the office and people access the data on it, but are not storing stuff on it.

It's labeled as drive L: (\\PcName\L) and I would like to take this drive off to make more use of it elsewhere, but I have about 180gb free on my C: drive and wondered if I could partition it while it's in use and then relabel the new partition to L: So no one will have to worry to remap the drive.

I've heard its possible, but I have no idea how to go about doing it.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[CyCo_SoMaTiC]

You can use a utility like Partition Magic, but I have had bad luck with it before in the past myself(OS corruption). So I don't know if I would do it on an OS drive.

 

[GabooN]

I have had this external TB connected to my work computer for months, and just now am realizing I'm only using 70-90gb on it and it's not being filled up. Right now it's mapped on numerous computers across the office and people access the data on it, but are not storing stuff on it.

It's labeled as drive L: (\\PcName\L) and I would like to take this drive off to make more use of it elsewhere, but I have about 180gb free on my C: drive and wondered if I could partition it while it's in use and then relabel the new partition to L: So no one will have to worry to remap the drive.

I've heard its possible, but I have no idea how to go about doing it.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I don’t know of any software that will partition a drive while it’s in use. I have had good experiences with EASEUS Partition Master I have used it between XP and Win7 dual boot without issue and have done 20 or so XP only PC. This program works after a reboot and before it loads windows, easy to use and have only lost data once but I think that was the HDD(7years old and partitioned more than once) fault not this program. Also on XP you will want to run a defrag after doing this. And as always make sure you backup your data before doing this..

 

[Sungaisu]

I'm running the Win7 32bit RC on this machine (We have a legit copy ready, but I don't feel its worth it just yet) It already has a partitioned drive for "Recovery" (Gateway), so I don't think the C: Drive is the OS drive.

 

[wcp6]

If you use something like partition magic, you can tell it how to set the partition tables then reboot into the tool to actually perform the partition, so it can work without interruption.

I've used them just fine in the past, with minimal problems (make sure you backup something you can't recover easily, but the risk is minimal)

 

[dustNbone]

Also defrag the partitions involved beforehand if possible. This is most important on the partition that you plan to shrink, it will speed things up considerably.

Dustin

 

[dustNbone]

Just thought of it but since it's an external drive, couldn't you just use a spare pc, maybe even a laptop, change it's system name to \\Pcname (before connecting it to the network), disconnect your PC, plug in the laptop, connect the drive to it and share it with it's old sharename? Just to minimize the disruption while your partition is resizing, because it could very well take a good long time. Just an idea, depending on how important user access to this data is.

Dustin

 

[Sungaisu]

Just thought of it but since it's an external drive, couldn't you just use a spare pc, maybe even a laptop, change it's system name to \\Pcname (before connecting it to the network), disconnect your PC, plug in the laptop, connect the drive to it and share it with it's old sharename? Just to minimize the disruption while your partition is resizing, because it could very well take a good long time. Just an idea, depending on how important user access to this data is.

Dustin

That's exactly what I did actually. Thanks for all the help guys.