Shrinking a system partition

[zakharin]

I have a dual-boot configuration with XP on my C partition, also the
system partition, and Vista on my V partition. I also have several
partitions in between including G immediately following C. What I'm
trying to do is insert a new partition between C and G, shring either
C or G or both. Although I have 5.37 GB free on C, Computer Management
shows only 23 MB available shrink space, even though I moved XP's page
file to a different partition and deleted its hibernate file. Is there
anything I'm missing or is it the fact that it's my system partition?
Drive G reports 1.7 GB free, all of it shrinkable.

Thanks in advance,
Boris Zakharin

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

You probably have an unmovable system file close to the end of the
partition. You cannot shrink any further than the last such file. It may
be a VSS file. Defrag is designed to move all the files it can towards the
front of the disk, but it cannot move these types of files.

 

[zakharin]

Would there be VSS files on an XP drive? I thought this feature was
only on server OSs up until Vista? Or are you saying that Vista put
those files there?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

XP has VSS.

Would there be VSS files on an XP drive? I thought this feature was
only on server OSs up until Vista? Or are you saying that Vista put
those files there?

 

[zakharin]

So is there any way to defragment them or get rid of them?

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

I guess they are called "unmovable system" files for a reason. On the
offchance that it happens to be a system restore point file, you could try
turning off System Restore and rebooting.