plinth wrote:I have read that the resize won't work by resizing to the left, since the C drive is partially filled and the unallocated part is before it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the unallocated part has to be behind the C drive in order to extend the unfilled portion of C into the unallocated part.
You are correct. To grow a partition, the free space must be on the right side. That is why in GParted a "grow to the left" is actually implemented in two steps. First a move of the partition into the free space on the left is performed, followed by a grow of the partition into the free space which is now on the right.
plinth wrote:I have read about the boot problems with Vista after moving the boot partition, so your idea of leaving a "placemark" sounds appropriate.
If you have already deleted the partition, then you could create a new small partition at the beginning of the drive as a "placemark" holder.
I believe the reason for leaving a partition in the same slot is in an attempt to prevent Windows from changing the drive letters used for each partition. In older versions of windows (e.g., Win9x) this was definitely the case. It may not be relevant for newer versions of windows.
plinth wrote:If I resize C to the left, is the unallocated portion literally put on the C drive "ahead" of everything else that's on C, or is it put at the end of C. If it is at the beginning of C, would defragging put everything in order?
As mentioned above, a partition can only be grown to the right. Hence the free space is added at the end of the drive.
Defragging your drive prior to resize operations is a good idea.
plinth wrote:Also, if I shrink the unallocated space ahead of C to a minimal size, what would happen? Would C automatically expand to that space? Or would I be better off to just extend C to the unallocated space?
Resize operations are not permitted on unallocated space. Hence the only option is to resize C to expand into the unallocated space.