Partitioning HD on Dell Laptop

[cryocynique]

I have Vista Home Premium preloaded on a Dell Inspiron 1520 with a 320gb hard
drive. I would like to isolate the OS from my data by shrinking the OS
partition to 42GB and creating another partition for my data. However,
Vista's partitioning utility says the minimum I can shrink the existing
partition to is around 176gb. I suspect that even though I have defragged
the hard drive, there is some part of the OS that is sitting on the drive out
far enough to cause this. I can't verify this because Vista's defrag utility
doesn't show you a map of the drive during defrag. Anyone know of a way
around this?

Thanks!

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Purchase an external hard drive and perform periodic backups to it.
It does not make any sense to have data on a separate partition
that is on the same hard drive. If you hard drive should fail, you'll
lose everything!

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience -
Windows System & Performance

---------------------------------------------------------------

:

I have Vista Home Premium preloaded on a Dell Inspiron 1520 with a 320gb hard
drive. I would like to isolate the OS from my data by shrinking the OS
partition to 42GB and creating another partition for my data. However,
Vista's partitioning utility says the minimum I can shrink the existing
partition to is around 176gb. I suspect that even though I have defragged
the hard drive, there is some part of the OS that is sitting on the drive out
far enough to cause this. I can't verify this because Vista's defrag utility
doesn't show you a map of the drive during defrag. Anyone know of a way
around this?

Thanks!

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Yep, you have to use a different utility to shrink the volume beyond that
point. Vista's drive tool cannot get past a locked file on the drive, and
the defrag utility will not move it. You have to either use a different
defragger that can, or a different partition utility that works outside of
Windows and can move the file.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[cryocynique]

When does it make since to partition a hard drive then? Only whe you have a
Recovery partition or have two operating systems? I hear what you are
saying, but academically, if there is an answer to my original question, I
would still like to know the answer. I tried use defrag.exe to see if some
kind of a disk map would be displayed, but it told me I needed to use an
administrator command prompt. Any one know how to get that?

Thanks!

 

[John Barnes]

Last question first. Start, all programs, accessories Right click on the
command prompt and use run as administrator.
Having the data on a separate partition only makes sense, to me, when you
have a backup program that you have to back up the entire partition or
nothing, otherwise you set up a backup utility to backup the data folders
you use directly from the OS drive.
As to the question about the unmovable file, you can delete the hiberfil
file, but if you use hibernation you will have to manually recreate it
later, and if you have room on another partition for a pagefile, you can
remove it from your OS partition and add one on the other partition then
delete the one on the OS partition. That seems to be the locked file most
commonly in the location you are being stopped. Good luck.

 

[DL]

To add to what JB posted, a third party utility eg Partition Magic will do
as you desire without having to go through hoops.
PS A fairly large data drive, you will be backing up all this data I trust

 

[cryocynique]

That's part of the problem. I've used Partition Magic to do this kind of
thing for several years. But supposedly there aren't any versions of
Partition Magic that are compatible with Vista. That's why I'm scrambling
for alternatives.

 

[Rick Rogers]

BootIT NG http://www.terabyteunlimited.com
Acronis Disk Director
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/

Both are compatible with the implementation of NTFS used by Vista.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[John Barnes]

The latest version of PM is compatible with Vista, but you can download a
trial version of products to do the job from Acronis or Terabyte. Terabyte
is my choice, but is a little less user friendly, but works on 64-bit
systems, whereas my experience with Acronis on 64-bit systems is iffy but it
does work fine on 32-bit. Your choice, buy if it meets your needs for the
future but you can get your job done now free.