Changing boot drive partition in Win 7

I just bought this notebook for my son for Christmas:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-636-_-Product

It runs fine, the only problem is that it comes with a partitioned hard drive, with the system drive much smaller than the data drive. My previous experience with a similarly partitioned drive (on my daughter's laptop) has been an ongoing nightmare; it's a constant struggle to keep the C drive from getting too full.

So on this new computer I'd like to remove the partition entirely before my son starts using it. However, it came with Windows 7, which evidently does not allow a boot drive partition to be changed. (This is a change from Vista, I was able to increase the boot partition on my daughter's computer.)

What are my options here? Is it possible that if I boot from a disk Win 7 will allow me to change the C drive partition? Or is reformatting the drive the only way to do this?

The laptop didn't come with Win 7 install disk, but a Windows 7 "Recovery Media disk". Will that do the job of re-installing the system software if I reformat the C drive?

Any help appreciated!

No advice?

I'm not really going to be much help here, but I'll respond anyway since nobody else has yet.

The recovery disc will most likely set up the same partition structure as it has now, I've only seen a few high end laptops that come with recovery disks that allow you to specify the layout of the partitions. They typically are just a series of warning screens that then copy the structure as set up by the factory.

The free partitioning utility I'd normally recommend to expand your C drive (GParted) seems to be having issues right now with NTFS, and I've not used any others lately to confidently recommend one. Hopefully someone else will see this and know one that's not having issues.

Edit: Link to an older version without the issues stated above, if you burn it to CD and boot from it, you should be able to do what you want. http://sourceforge.net/projects/gpar...Files/0.4.6-1/

Thanks! It would indeed be frustrating to try to reformat the hard drive only to have it partitioned the way it is now. I know there must be a way to do it, though, since several of the reviewers on NewEgg mentioned reformatting the hard drive for that reason.

But using partition software certainly would be faster and easier! I'll try your suggestion using a boot disk.

GParted work *great*! Thank you so much!

I had a bad moment when I rebooted the computer and chkdsk kicked in, but everything checked out fine and the drive is just how I wanted it.

Thanks again!