Partition troubles

January 11, 2009 9:48 AM

Partition trouble: I'm trying to shrink my C drive so that I can install the Win7 beta on another partition--problem is, it won't shrink right.

I have Vista installed on my laptop, and I'd like to take a shot at the Windows 7 beta. To do this I've tried to shrink my existing Vista partition down to make room, but for whatever reason the Disk management utility will only give me about 1.7 gigs, even though I have tons of free space on my computer (about 98 gigs in reality).

What's up? I took a screenshot that will tell the story a little better than I can:
http://i39.tinypic.com/2rdd8iw.jpg

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

posted by pandemic to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Also, I should mention that I've already defragged my hard disk--no changes to available space.
posted by pandemic at 9:54 AM on January 11, 2009

Vista will do this, particularly when you have files with the "System" attribute (the page file and the hibernate file are the usual candidates). I always boot Linux from a USB drive, backup the partition with dd and restore via ntfsclone to a smaller partition.
posted by themel at 10:03 AM on January 11, 2009

GParted live can resize the partition for you and comes in bootable USB and CD flavours.
posted by phax at 10:26 AM on January 11, 2009

I had this same problem, and I ended up just upgrading Vista to Win7. I backed up all my important data first, and the upgrade happened flawlessly. I have no desire to go back to Vista now.
posted by demon666 at 11:55 AM on January 11, 2009

You need to use a good defrag program, not the Windows defragger. Paragon Total Defrag and Diskeeper work, I've used both - I'm pretty sure one of the two offers a 30-day demo.
You may also need to go into your system settings and turn off your Page/Swap file temporarily. One of the issues I've had with defragging/shrinking partition sizes is that Vista places the swap file near the end of the drive, and the windows defrag app can't move it. If I recall correctly, Paragon Total Defrag actually runs in dos mode immediately after a reboot, so is able to move the swap file, and you don't need to turn off your swap file to do it.
posted by jferg at 12:08 PM on January 11, 2009

Beginning with Windows XP, Microsoft deliberately installs part of the OS near the end of the target partition and marks it unmoveable -- this, apparently, to discourage people from experimenting with alternatives. It isn't really unmoveable, and you may be able get it to resituate itself closer to the beginning of the partition by using GParted to resize the Vista partition to as small as it can and then defragment using Vista. (That "unmoveable" remnant doesn't seem to like to be backed up right against the end of the partition.)

It's a really annoying problem -- ironic to see it bite Microsoft in its own upgrading ass this time. Good luck . . .
posted by gum at 3:13 PM on January 11, 2009

Beginning with Windows XP, Microsoft deliberately installs part of the OS near the end of the target partition and marks it unmoveable -- this, apparently, to discourage people from experimenting with alternatives. It isn't really unmoveable, and you may be able get it to resituate itself closer to the beginning of the partition by using GParted to resize the Vista partition to as small as it can and then defragment using Vista. (That "unmoveable" remnant doesn't seem to like to be backed up right against the end of the partition.)

It's a really annoying problem -- ironic to see it bite Microsoft in its own upgrading ass this time. Good luck . . .

Seems like a lot of trouble to go through, just to dissuade a few people from experimenting with alternatives. Especially when it's almost entirely ineffective for people who know what they are doing.

What's the real reason they did it?
posted by gjc at 3:29 PM on January 11, 2009

BACKUP ALL OF YOUR DATA BEFORE YOU START PLAYING THE RESIZE GAME.

You've been warned.
posted by SirStan at 5:45 PM on January 11, 2009

What's the real reason they did it?

It is the duplicate copy of the MFT. It isn't some scheme to stop you from installing Ubuntu.
posted by SirStan at 5:47 PM on January 11, 2009

Thanks for all the answers guys. I'm going to try some of these tomorrow and I'll update you on the results.
posted by pandemic at 5:54 PM on January 11, 2009

What's the real reason they did it?

Also, they tend to put the swap/page and hibernate files near the end of the disk in order to get a contiguous chunk of drive space, rather than them being fragmented.
posted by jferg at 8:37 AM on January 12, 2009

This update's a little late but for anyone who was wondering--

Gparted did the job perfectly and created the space I needed.

But...

It ruined the bootloader. Apparently this is pretty much inevitable when using this with Vista, so I had to use my recovery disc to repair it and get on my way. DO NOT use Gparted on a Vista drive unless you have your recovery disc ready.
posted by pandemic at 4:48 PM on February 15, 2009