Am I missing something here?

[xj0hnx]

I have a single 1TB drive in my new computer, and I want to resize the C:/ drive into two partitions. I want the C:/ drive partition to be about 150GB and the rest into a storage partition for storing movies, pictures and what not. I managed to create a new partition, but it's only 321GB, now when try to resize C: to reclaim some of the 575GB free space to add to it, it tells me that there's no free space. No utility I have found will do it. This is really annoying because I am using the machine as a HTPC, and want all the movies on the same partion.

I have disabled System Restore, reduced the pagefile to 16MB, but even though I am only using 34GB (pretty sad a practically new install of an OS is 34 freaking GB's) and have 575 free GB, it will not let me resize it, is there some magic trick to it?

 

[Billb2]

What are you using to try and resize?
Partition Magic or Acronis will do it.

 

[xj0hnx]

I've tried the Vista utility, and Acronis. Acronis will let me do it with every other drive/partition, except the C:/ drive, in that one it won't even give me an option like the others. I don't have Norton, and I found another free utility, but ti was only for 32-bit. I am using 64-bit Vista.

 

[mpilchfamily]

The easiest way to have acomplished this would have been while you where initially installing Vista onto the drive. The you could have told it to only use the 150Gb you wanted. Then afterwards you could have create a new partion to fill the rest of the drive.

Now you will need a partioning application to take care the resizing. You won't be able to resize the partionons while in the OS.

 

[xj0hnx]

I know, but I didn't, and now I am.

The problem is that no partitioning software is able to do it. When you look at the drive in Acronis, or Vista's siftware, it says that there is no free space, even though it is showing hundreds of GB free. And you actually can resize the partitions from inside Vista with the disk managment software, it then reboots, and applies that changes.

I think I have figured out why it won't give me the option to resize that partition, and that is that Vista has written some system file(s) at the what is no the end of the partition. Once I can get on my machine and verify this I'll need to get a defrag utility that will m ove those files forward, and then I should be able to resize it.

 

[mc866]

You could download a Gparted disc image and boot to that, you should be able to resize from there without issues.

Actually I believe you can do this from Windows in Vista, do you have XP or Vista? If you right click my computer and go to manage. From there click on disc management. Once your discs load right click on the drive you want to resize and click shrink volume.

 

[xj0hnx]

Originally posted by: xj0hnx
I've tried the Vista utility, and Acronis. Acronis will let me do it with every other drive/partition, except the C:/ drive, in that one it won't even give me an option like the others. I don't have Norton, and I found another free utility, but ti was only for 32-bit. I am using 64-bit Vista.

The reason the Vista utility will not let me resize is that there are files at that end of the partition, so it see it as full. I am using PerfectDisk now to move them all to the front of the disc, and then hopefully it will let me resize it. If not I guess I'll have to reinstall and make the partition smaller from there.

 

[xj0hnx]

Ok, so I found some stuff out. Most utilities are useless at moving unmovable files lol.

Anyway, if you're trying to shrink a disk that won't shrink, you can look in the Event Viewer for event 259, that will tell you the number of the cluster that is unmovable, then you use cmd as admin and use "fsutil volume querycluster C 0x30487530" (<-whatever the cluster is), and that will spit out a file name. If you're lucky it is something like pagefile, or hibfil.sys, both of which can be moved, if not, just forget about it, at least for now, I am researching more. After the intitial event 259 I can't seem to get the event again now that I have taken care of pagefile, and hibfil.sys, but there is apparently another file at the end of the partition.

Does anyone know a utility that can find, and name file at certain clusters on a HHD?

 

[GaryJohnson]

Originally posted by: mc866
You could download a Gparted disc image and boot to that, you should be able to resize from there without issues.

+1 for this. Gparted runs from a live! disc. You're not going to be able to do this with a utility within the OS. And you might have issues afterwards. It's generally a bad idea to try to shrink an OS partition. Windows likes having that freespace there and it's probably gonna get really ticked if you try and take it away.

 

[xj0hnx]

Originally posted by: GaryJohnson

Originally posted by: mc866
You could download a Gparted disc image and boot to that, you should be able to resize from there without issues.

+1 for this. Gparted runs from a live! disc. You're not going to be able to do this with a utility within the OS. And you might have issues afterwards. It's generally a bad idea to try to shrink an OS partition. Windows likes having that freespace there and it's probably gonna get really ticked if you try and take it away.

I tried Gparted, when it was going through setup, it would tell me something about a unsupported resolution, even though it was running on my monitors native res, and a little box was just floating across the screen.

Even using Gparted, chances are that it would cause a problem and I'd have to do a Repair off the disc, since Gparted isn't going to move the system file that's keeping it from doing it inside Windows.

 

[Modelworks]

Use perfect disk to consolidate the file system and set it to do it at boot or offline. It can't move files that are in use like system files, so it has to do it offline.
Another option is to download the Ubuntu Linux live cd. It has better video support than gparted live disc. Once booted to the ubuntu desktop use the system tools there to set up the partitions.

 

[corkyg]

I have most of those programs on hand, but my choice in this case would be Acronis Disk Director.

DD

Furthermore, I would prepare DD's bootable CDR and use it so that the OS on your HDD is not involved.

 

[techmanc]

Get one of the Hard Disk Manager free trials at paragon.............


http://www.paragon-software.com/home/hdm-personal/