Computer hard drive management

[jaybee]

I recently installed a new, larger hard disk in one of our computers.  Because the existing disk was failing the utility that came with the new drive wouldn't produce a bootable drive and I used a utility called HDClone to clone the partition.  That leaves me with a large amount of unallocated space on the drive.  Does anyone have experience with utilities that allow partitions to be resized?  I really would prefer a shareware/freeware approach rather than dropping $70 on PartitionMagic for the one time I'm going to use it.  PCWorld.com links to a utility called Ranish Partition Manager, has anyone used it?  Suggestions are welcome.

[Dave]

I recently installed a new, larger hard disk in one of our computers.  Because the existing disk was failing the utility that came with the new drive wouldn't produce a bootable drive and I used a utility called HDClone to clone the partition.  That leaves me with a large amount of unallocated space on the drive.  Does anyone have experience with utilities that allow partitions to be resized?  I really would prefer a shareware/freeware approach rather than dropping $70 on PartitionMagic for the one time I'm going to use it.  PCWorld.com links to a utility called Ranish Partition Manager, has anyone used it?  Suggestions are welcome.

I was under the assumption that all the new drives came with a bootable disk or cd  to partition the drive to full capacty. The last one i did was a maxtor and it had the bootable disk then xp reformatted it to xp specs. I need another drive I think cause mine is getting full but im also considering a mother board upgrade cause ive got boot up issues on one machine and ive narrowed it to a board problem.
Dave

[jaybee]

I was under the assumption that all the new drives came with a bootable disk or cd  to partition the drive to full capacty. The last one i did was a maxtor and it had the bootable disk then xp reformatted it to xp specs. I need another drive I think cause mine is getting full but im also considering a mother board upgrade cause ive got boot up issues on one machine and ive narrowed it to a board problem.
Dave

My drive is a Seagate.  Unfortunately the drive I replaced was failing rapidly.  Attempting to copy the old drive onto the new with Seagate's utility or Western Digital's (old drive was WD) resulted in an unbootable drive due to corruption of Windows.  I'm not technical enough to completely understand why but for some reason cloning the partition resulted in a bootable drive but the vendor's copy utility didn't, even after multiple attempts.  I've swapped hard drives in the past but this was the first time I've had to replace a drive that was having trouble booting.  In fact I thought we'd lost it completely but eventually it managed to repair the registry from a log file & then I proceeded with the swap.

[unklian]

WAY over my head,but you might try on www.annoyances.org

They aeem pretty knowledgable.

[Fat Cat]

try this site

http://partitionlogic.org.uk/index.html

haven't had a need to use it yet but it comes recommended to me.

[jaybee]

Thanks Frank.  I'll give it a look.  If it works I'll let you know for your future reference.