Shrinking a partition

[Brontosaurus Burger AKA Vista!]

Christoph Boget wrote:
Try running Disk Cleanup, and removing your restore points, then
defragmenting the drive before you attempt to shrink it.
Ok, I ran the Disk Cleanup utility and was able to clean 2.5gb
worth of junk. That, along with deleting all my mp3s, I now have
68.5gb used and 67.9gb free on my disk. I also went to the "More
Options" tab in the utility and clicked the "Clean up..." button
in the "System Restore and Shadow Copies" section. I clicked the
"Delete" button so that it would remove all but the most recent
restore point. I then defragged my drive using AusLogics disk
defrag utility.
However, even after doing all of that, when I go into Disk
Management and tell it that I want to shrink my partition, it's
still showing that it can only shrink it by 1.67gb. That's just
insane. Is there anything else I can do to get Vista to allow me
to shrink it by approx 30gb? Or am I going to have to go with a
3rd party app?
You could use Wubi http://wubi-installer.org/ to install Ubuntu
within Windows as if it were an application.
I'd rather set it up for dual boot.

thnx,
Christoph
You can use the Ubuntu Live CD to do your partitioning.

Alias

Second time in a week I have to add you to my kill file and you say your
hardly ever change your stats!

Your [sic] proving my point about you being annoying.

Do you think you'll get over it or should we call the suicide squad?

Why don't you try using self control and ignore my posts?

BTW, the reason I am nymshifting is so that the good folks reading the MS
web forums can benefit from my advice. It has nothing to do with you so
stop flattering yourself.

Alias

You are so full of shit. NOBODY here can benefit from your lousy advice.
Ubuntu sucks. Period.

 

[Richard Urban]

The built-in shrink utility will be able to decrease the partition size till
it bumps against the first unmovable/locked system file.

If you want to decrease the partition further you will need a 3rd party Disk
Management tool. I use Acronis Disk Director suite (ver 11.0 build 8027).
It is 100% Vista compatible.

After installing the above program, create the emergency CD. Reboot the
computer and boot up with this CD. Do your partition work from there.

You will not be hampered with locked files.

 

[Christoph Boget]

If there is a locked, immovable file on the drive near the end of the

volume, then Vista's drive tool will not be able to shrink the volume
beyond
that point. To do so you need to use a third party tool that works
outside
of 'Vista' (http://www.vistax64.com/#) such as Acronis' Disk Director
or
EASEUS Partition Manager 3.0 Home Edition
'Norton Partition Magic alternative: Freeware for Windows 2000/XP/Vista
- FREE EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition'
(http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm)

Is there a good, free, utility that will create a boot disk? EASEUS free
edition doesn't create a boot disk and presumably it will have the same
problem with not being able to move an immovable/locked file while running
from within the OS.

thnx,
Christoph

 

[Billy Buddusky]

Is there a good, free, utility that will create a boot disk? EASEUS free
edition doesn't create a boot disk and presumably it will have the same
problem with not being able to move an immovable/locked file while running
from within the OS.

Never presume. Try first.

I would bet EASEUS will perform just fine.

 

[Christoph Boget]

Is there a good, free, utility that will create a boot disk? EASEUS free

Never presume. Try first.
I would bet EASEUS will perform just fine.

Well, looks like my presumption was correct. Using O&O Defrag (several
times), I've defragged my drive and now have 80gb of free space. I used
EASEUS to shrink my partition by 45gb. I was told that I needed to reboot
and during the boot-up process, EASEUS took over and tried to resize the
partition. After a few moments, I was told that there was an error, that
there wasn't enough space and that I should free up some more. Trying
again, I used EASEUS to shrink my partition by 30gb. Again I needed to
reboot and again during the boot-up process, EASEUS took over and ended up
giving me the exact same error.

Going in to Disk Management, I'm still told that I can shrink the partition
by only 5gb. So after having tried defragging (several times) and using a
3rd party partition manager all with no success, am I pretty well screwed?
Is there no other way I can get it so that the 80gb of free space is
contiguous? And so that there are no locked/immovable files in the way?

thnx,
Christoph

 

[Billy Buddusky]

If you want a boot disk try Gparted.
'GParted -- LiveCD' (http://gparted-livecd.tuxfamily.org/)

Learn how to reply to the right person, clown.

 

[Christoph Boget]

The built-in shrink utility will be able to decrease the partition size

till
it bumps against the first unmovable/locked system file.
If you want to decrease the partition further you will need a 3rd party
Disk
Management tool. I use Acronis Disk Director suite (ver 11.0 build 8027).
It is 100% Vista compatible.
After installing the above program, create the emergency CD. Reboot the
computer and boot up with this CD. Do your partition work from there.
You will not be hampered with locked files.

Version 11? Is that a beta version? The highest version available for DL
from their site is 10.

My problem with using Acronis is that it costs $50 for something that I
would probably ever only use this once. And their trial version would only
allow me to create a partition that is 7.8mb in size. 7.8mb? That's
useful... :|

thnx,
Christoph

 

[Richard Urban]

You got me! I put down the version number for TrueImage instead of Disk
Director.

Anyway, you need a 3rd party program that runs at boot time to do what needs
to be done.

 

[Richard Urban]

Again, Disk Director Suite **WILL** do what needs to be done. I have done it
many times.

Sometimes you actually have to pay to get good purpose driven software.

 

[Eric Tiberius Duckman]

Is there a good, free, utility that will create a boot disk? EASEUS free
edition doesn't create a boot disk and presumably it will have the same
problem with not being able to move an immovable/locked file while running
from within the OS.

thnx,
Christoph

I just used EASEUS free to shrink my system partition by 120Gigs, when
Vista's disk manager refused to reduce it by more than 14Gigs(it kept
saying "Access Denied"), on a disk with nearly 300Gigs of free space.
It reboots the pc, and apparently does the resizing before Vista
completely loads.

 

[Eric Tiberius Duckman]

Well, looks like my presumption was correct. Using O&O Defrag (several
times), I've defragged my drive and now have 80gb of free space. I used
EASEUS to shrink my partition by 45gb. I was told that I needed to reboot
and during the boot-up process, EASEUS took over and tried to resize the
partition. After a few moments, I was told that there was an error, that
there wasn't enough space and that I should free up some more. Trying
again, I used EASEUS to shrink my partition by 30gb. Again I needed to
reboot and again during the boot-up process, EASEUS took over and ended up
giving me the exact same error.

Going in to Disk Management, I'm still told that I can shrink the partition
by only 5gb. So after having tried defragging (several times) and usinga
3rd party partition manager all with no success, am I pretty well screwed?
Is there no other way I can get it so that the 80gb of free space is
contiguous? And so that there are no locked/immovable files in the way?

thnx,
Christoph

Have you disabled system restore, hibernation, and the page file on
the partiton you are trying to shrink? Also, run chkdsk on it.

 

[Christoph Boget]

Have you disabled system restore, hibernation, and the page file on

the partiton you are trying to shrink? Also, run chkdsk on it.

Yes, yes and yes. I also ran chkdsk on it. Now I can get Vista's Disk
Management to say that it can shrink the volume by 13gb. When I used EASEUS
to try to shrink the volume, first by 40gb then by 30gb, it errored out
saying that I needed to free up more space. When I go in to O&O Defrag,
using the cluster inspector I don't see any MFT or locked blocks towards the
end of the drive. I do see locked blocks but they are towards the
beginning.

This is just silly. I've been at this since Saturday morning trying
everything to get this stupid volume to shrink. Now it looks like I'm going
to have to spend $50 on something that I'd only use once and am not at all
sure will even work. By all accounts, EASEUS should have worked, too.

*sigh*

thnx,
Christoph

 

[Martin Descartes]

This is just silly. I've been at this since Saturday morning trying
everything to get this stupid volume to shrink. Now it looks like I'm going
to have to spend $50 on something that I'd only use once and am not at all
sure will even work. By all accounts, EASEUS should have worked, too.

Have you EVER done a FULL CHKDSK on the drive? What if you spend that
$50 and come to find out that the drive has a problem somewhere that
hasn't yet shown up in Windows operation (because the space isn't
being used by anything).

 

[Christoph Boget]

This is just silly. I've been at this since Saturday morning trying

Have you EVER done a FULL CHKDSK on the drive? What if you spend that
$50 and come to find out that the drive has a problem somewhere that
hasn't yet shown up in Windows operation (because the space isn't
being used by anything).

I ran chkdsk /X /B. Doing that required that I reboot the machine so that
chkdsk could run outside of the OS. If that's not a "FULL CHKDSK", I'm not
sure what you are talking about. When finished, chkdsk found no problems or
errors on the drive.

thnx,
Christoph

 

[Martin Descartes]

I ran chkdsk /X /B. Doing that required that I reboot the machine so that
chkdsk could run outside of the OS. If that's not a "FULL CHKDSK", I'm not
sure what you are talking about.

FULL CHKDSK means also check for bad sectors on the disk.

From within the Windows GUI:

Computer
right-click the drive
Properties
Tools
Check Now
Scan For....

Command Line - use the /r switch

 

[Christoph Boget]

I ran chkdsk /X /B. Doing that required that I reboot the machine so that

FULL CHKDSK means also check for bad sectors on the disk.
Command Line - use the /r switch

Umm, /B implies /R.

thnx,
Christoph

 

[John Barnes]

If you use the install disk and command prompt, delete the pagefile.sys and
hiberfil.sys if it still exists, defrag the drive also from there and do
your shrink. If none of these work, you will have to take Ricks advice and
I personally prefer Terabytes BootItNg.