Hacking Change hard drive parition order

[yatesl]

Here's the current state of my external hard drive (Disk 2)

Spoiler

However, for Dios-Mios to work, External 32 needs to be the first partition. I've checked this program, and I can't find a way (the "Resize/Move Parition" option doesn't seem to work). Any advice, aside from formatting the ENTIRE hard drive and doing it again (bearing in mind it's a 2TB drive).

 

[PsyBlade]

most partition move tools will copy all the data around and take as long as copying it again

but the first partition does not actually need to be located first on the disk
It is possible to reorder them if you know what you are doing
But you need to stay away from other partitioning tools after doing it
they might undo it or maybe even get confused

Problem is I only know how to do it using gnu fdisk
that means you have to run linux (normal install or booted from CD/DVD or USB stick
might be possible using cygwin on windows or an OSX install too, I would need to check that

If you are interested I can walk you through it but it will be dangerous if you don't have at least some experience with handling partitions on an unix like system

others might know some windows tool capable of pulling it of too

 

[yatesl]

Hmm ... Any way to do it with a Windows program?

 

[chop]

Partition Master

 

[yatesl]

I have that, but I can't find the option.

 

[PsyBlade]

I hope someone else knows some windows tool

but if no one does I might try to code something myself
(motivation could be greatly enhanced by lots of people asking and some bucks pledged for success)

 

[yusuo]

I know resizing a partition can take a few hours depending on size of the drive, Im not sure about moving drive letter because its moving multiple amounts of data on the drive at the same time. I image the risk of corrupted sectors on the drive would be quite high

EDIT
Found this on the net

Convert Logical Partition to Primary Partition

This operation is for converting a Logical volume to a primary volume and applies to basic MBR disks.​

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Each basic MBR disk can have either up to four primary volumes, or up to three primary volumes plus an unlimited number of logical volumes. To prepare a volume for system or boot volume, you need to convert it to primary volume.​

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To convert a logical volume to primary:​

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• Right-click the logical volume that you want to convert to primary, and then click Convert to primary.
• Click OK to add the pending operation of converting volume to primary.
• The pending operation will be performed by clicking Apply. Exiting the program without applying the operation will discard it.

Note:​

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• A basic MBR disk can only have up to four primary volumes, or up to three primary volumes plus successive logical volumes.
• If the disk contains more than one logical volume, you can convert a logical volume to primary only when there are two or less primary volumes on the disk.

Thats with EaseUS partition manager but obviously you would need to convert your current primary to logical first. Good luck

 

[yatesl]

I think I have sorted it. I only had 12GB of data on the FAT partition, so I took that off and deleted it. I could then, using EaseUS, move the unallocated space in front of the NTFS partition. I then converted that space to FAT32 again.

It's a lot of data, so it's still doing it, but finger's crossed...

 

[yusuo]

Well good luck any how

 

[PsyBlade]

I think I have sorted it. I only had 12GB of data on the FAT partition, so I took that off and deleted it. I could then, using EaseUS, move the unallocated space in front of the NTFS partition. I then converted that space to FAT32 again. It's a lot of data, so it's still doing it, but finger's crossed...

Depending on how smart te tool is it might read and write the whole 2TiB or 12GiB or nothing.
How long this might take is anyones guess. But the worst (and most likely) case of transfering 4TiB over USB might take a while.
But unless you loose power or get a bluescreen from somewhere else it should work without problems.

 

[yatesl]

1 and a half hours later, and I'm on 491 out of 27677 (files? bits?) processed. I've got a feeling it's an over night job.

 

[Anon10W1z]

1 and a half hours later, and I'm on 491 out of 27677 (files? bits?) processed. I've got a feeling it's an over night job.

That's blocks (AFAIK), and then you have a really slow computer. Maybe it froze at the 491st block?

 

[yatesl]

Perhaps. My computer's fine - The hard drive or USB dock might be a bit rubbish. It's on 915 now so I'm thinking it got off to a slow start.

Update: In 20 minutes it's on 6500, and hammering through the numbers. Ladies and gentlemen, we're making progress. Cheers to everyone who posted in here, hopefully this will work!