Resize C Drive (partition) without losing Data?

Infopackets Reader Joanna writes:

" Dear Dennis,

I have installed a 120 gigabyte (GB) hard drive in my computer. The 120 gigabyte drive has been split into two entities: the C drive is 15.5 GB large and contains Windows XP plus all my installed programs; the D drive is the remaining 104 GB and contains a few downloaded programs.

The problem is that my C drive is nearly full. I want to resize my C drive, but is there any way to do this without having to format my hard drive and reinstall Windows and all my programs along with it? I am on dialup Internet access and it would take *weeks* if I had to format my drive and then re-download everything again. Can you help?! "

My response:

What you are referring to is called a Partition Management Software (or otherwise known as a "partition manager").

In the past, there was no way to resize the geometry of your hard drive without losing any of the data stored on the drive. But a lot has changed since that time and there are now a number of third-party utilities that allow you to manipulate the size of your hard drive partitions right within the Windows Environment.

One such program is called Acronis Partition Expert. Partition Expert comes highly recommended, is extremely easy to use, and is an excellent companion to Acronis True Image (backup software).

Recently, Acronis Partition Expert became part of another, large packaged, called "Acronis Disk Director Suite." Not very long ago I wrote an article on Disk Director Suite, with a focus on backup strategies (with respect to Partition Expert). You can read that review using the link below; included is a link to download:

Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 Review