Partition question/disabling snapshot

[Guest]

Hey guys, I want to partition my C: drive. It has 222GB of space. I want to
split it to a new drive with 200GB. Now the issue is that I want to transfer
all of my media data (music, movies, video, photos etc) into the new
partition and keep the C strictly for windows stuff, settings, and programs.
My media contains about 105GB of data. Where it gets tricky is that 118GB is
being used (105gb being my data)104GB is free. It will only let me shrink up
to 95GB, I'm assuming anymore than that will cut it close to what needs to be
available or whatever. So what I want to do is create the new partitionof
95gb, transfer as much as I can, which will free up the c by another 95gb.
then I would want to shrink the c more, but it limits me to a very small
amount, even though I freed up 95 more gb, it will only let me shrink it by
only 10gb or so, and on the bottom it says "Size of available shrink space
can be restricted if snapshots and page files are enabled on the volume"
what the @%^ !does that mean and how do I disable it? and if i do disable it
would i be able to do what i need to do?

Basically I can't shrink what I want to shrink. But even when I do shrink
an extra 10GB, it wont let me extend the new partition by 10GB"

this is for my Dell XPS410 vista home premium 220gb sata drive

 

[Rock]

Hey guys, I want to partition my C: drive. It has 222GB of space. I want
to
split it to a new drive with 200GB. Now the issue is that I want to
transfer
all of my media data (music, movies, video, photos etc) into the new
partition and keep the C strictly for windows stuff, settings, and
programs.
My media contains about 105GB of data. Where it gets tricky is that 118GB
is
being used (105gb being my data)104GB is free. It will only let me shrink
up
to 95GB, I'm assuming anymore than that will cut it close to what needs to
be
available or whatever. So what I want to do is create the new partitionof
95gb, transfer as much as I can, which will free up the c by another 95gb.
then I would want to shrink the c more, but it limits me to a very small
amount, even though I freed up 95 more gb, it will only let me shrink it
by
only 10gb or so, and on the bottom it says "Size of available shrink space
can be restricted if snapshots and page files are enabled on the volume"
what the @%^ !does that mean and how do I disable it? and if i do disable
it
would i be able to do what i need to do?

Basically I can't shrink what I want to shrink. But even when I do shrink
an extra 10GB, it wont let me extend the new partition by 10GB"

this is for my Dell XPS410 vista home premium 220gb sata drive

How much it will shrink depends on the location of unmovable files on that
partition. If you disable system restore (and volume shadow copies) that
might remove some of those unmovable files, I don't know.

But even if it shrinks as much as you want, you won't be able to add that
space to the other partition. Vista's disk management is limited it
features. It will only create partitions out of unallocated space or add
space if that unallocated space is to the right of the partition you want to
add it to. In your case if it were to shrink that unallocated space would
be to the left of the partition you want to enlarge.

So use a 3rd party partitioning program such as Acronis Disk Director Suite
10 which in the latest build is fully compatible with Vista, or BootIt NG
from Terabyte Unlimited. That has a 30 day full featured free trial
version. I believe Acronis DD also has a trial version but I don't know if
it's full featured.

As always make sure there is a full backup of important data at all times
and particularly before doing any changes in partitions. I recommend using
Complete PC Backup which is in image but it only comes with Vista Business,
Enterprise and Ultimate. Otherwise or in as an adjunct to Complete PC
Backup use Acronis True Image version 10 to image the system to an external
drive. This is an excellent backup and recovery solution.