How to increase FAT32 HD?

Thanks for the earlier answers group.

I found the primary cause and it is a full FAT32HD and I went and ran the Parallels Image Tool and changed the HD from 8GB to 16GB and when I restarted I still had 8GB HD. After investigating I found the Management tool and it says we have a 16GB HD with 8GB being the healthy system and 8GB being un-allocated?

So my question is how do I get all 16GBs into the primary partition or how do I convert my 2 FAT32 partitions into 1 NTFS partition.

 

To convert, you'll need to reformat probably. To unify them, use a partitioning tool like GParted LiveCD.

 

Conversion to NTFS does not require reformatting. Just open a command prompt and type

convert C: /fs:NTFS

It will tell you that you can't convert the current drive, and ask if you want to convert at next boot. Tell it yes, and reboot Windows. The conversion requires a few percent free space, so if the drive is full, disable the swap file, and reboot the VM first. (Expect Windows to be slow unless you've given it a lot of RAM). The conversion is not very fast so you might want to do something else while you wait.

I'd suggest you make a backup of your .hdd file before you start just in case something goes wrong.

Unifying partitions (if both contain data) requires shrinking the old, expanding the new, moving files from old to new, and repeating until all files are moved (or using an external drive). There's no such thing as "unifying" multiple partitions.

 

Haven't done any reformatting in a while. Much less in windows, but good thing you knew a better answer
About the partition, he said the second one is unformatted. It's just a matter of expanding the first one using partitioning tools. It could be called unifying also, since you're merging both into a single big one, but I get your point.

 

Merging Partition during-after NTFS conversion

Good news on "Conversion to NTFS does not require reformatting. Just open a command prompt and type "convert C: /fs:NTFS" ".

What I have is TWO 8GB HDs in 1 partion. The first 8GB is my clients original 8GB FAT 32 HD and after I ran the image.tool I had 8GB allocated and 8GB unallocated all in the same partition.

So my plan is:
1. Make a backup copy of HD file.

2. I will delete an application or 2 until I have 15% empty space or more. Currently I have 9% empty space.

3. From a Command Prompt I will convert C: /fs:NTFS

4. I will see what happens after the convert C: /fs:NTFS proceedure and from the "Manage" HD tool in XP I will see if I need to get the two sections of the HD being one large allocated space.

 

After you do the conversion, you should leave the extra 8gb as 'unallocated' - don't create a new partition. Your next step is to 'expand' your current c: partition to include the unallocated space. Unfortunatly M$ XP/2000 doesn't have a built-in tool to do this, and you will have to obtain one. I have used Partition Magic for years to do this, but whatever you find must run properly under the Parallels VM because you are re-sizing a virtual disk not a real one. Actually, there are a lot more close-to-free tools to re-size Fat32 partitons, so you might consider re-sizing before converting to NTFS. This whole situation is exactly the same as if you were running windoze natively and installed a new hard drive that you copied your 8gb partition onto. These tools will format the new space without any additional effort. Good Luck.

 

What if I removed second 8GB First

1. Just an idea. What if I used the parallels image tool and shrink the 16GB HD back to 8GB first?

2. Then use the "Conversion to NTFS by opening a command prompt and typing "convert C: /fs:NTFS" ".

I know to do number two, I may need to toss one application just to get a little more room back on the HD.

3. Use the parallels image tool a second time and grow the 8GB NTFS HD back to 16GB NTFS HD?

Does this sound reosonable and safe?

 

Safe, yes. Reasonable? Well, there's really no point in shrinking the hdd first. the conversion operates on the partition, not the entire disk so the results will be exactly the same whether you just convert the disk as is, or shrink, convert, and expand.

Expanding the image with the Parallels image tool is the virtual equivalent of opening up the hard disk and adding a platter. It has no effect on any partition.

Of course, if you are only converting to NTFS so that you can grow the partition, you can use the gaprtd live CD to expand the FAT32 partition directly. Download the image from sourceforge, boot from it, and grow the disk. Problem solved. (Make a copy first, of course).