disk management problem on R61

my R61 just arrived (check out my specs if reqd)

my 80GB HD was partitioned as EISA - 8GB and primary C: - 68GB. i tried shrinking the volume from 68 to around 48GB. my system hung up, and i had no choice but to restart it. now volume C has 48 GB but no unallocated space on the disk in volume view, while system properties still shows 68GB but i can't shrink it further either.

Do you think i should call lenovo support for this? is there a charge? or should i contact miscrosoft? i believe there is some charge for this ($59.00!!!). do they not send windows CDs because there is a recovery volume?

 

whoa. why did you try to shrink the primary partition down? gparted live cd works great. maybe that can recover you now also.

 

i shouldn't shrink the primary volume? i didn't know!!!

 

no. sounds like you were taking away from your usable storage space and creating either empty space or adding to the hidden recovery partition. you should not mess with your partitions until you are a little more familiar with disk management unless you want to give yourself a crash course in reinstallation from scratch.

 

well, looks like i am in the midst of such a crash course. let me download gparted liveUSB and see what i can do (and that will have to be first time too!)

 

can you still boot up to windows? if so you should be fine. with gparted you can move the unallocated space back to the correct partion. It takes time but works great.

 

i can still boot up... but tell me, can't i run gparted from my thinkpad itself? i can't seen any exe or such type of file. should i copy the files to an USB drive and boot my system from it? (this goes to say, i am too amateur to have tried resizing the volume in the first place)

 

Which tool did you use to shrink partition? Vista's Disk Management/diskpart? I never had any problem with these tools. The only shortcoming is they don't relocate data to make more room.

I believe the shrinking of the file system was successful but not the partition. That's why you lost the free space equal to the shrink operation but no unallocated space on the disk.

First do a scan for error/chkdsk with automatically fix errors checked. Reboot the computer. Then try the shrink operation again.

 

yes, i used vista's disk management. it did seem simple enough to use - except that it hung up while shrinking. i didn't even move to the partitioning phase. so it had to be a problem with the shrinking itself - the system hung up (i waited abt 30 min) so i restarted it. so the shrink was not completed - it shows different volume caacities for drive C in different places

do you think the unallocated space will appear somewhere else? it doesn't on the disk manager...

 

The unused space will not magically reappear somewhere. The free space is at the end of the partition. The system partition has not been adjusted to make that unused space unallocated.

Before you do anything, make sure you have created the product recovery discs. Just in case.

I don't think Disk Management can handle the current situation of file system is sized differently from the partition. You will need to use diskpart.

Press WinKey-R or click Start and enter diskpart and press enter. Accept the UAC prompt. Enter these commands in order into the diskpart window. I will put my comments in parentheses after the command.

select disk 0
select partition 2 (partition 1 should be RnR and partition 2 should be windows)
extend filesystem (this re-extend the file system to partition size)
shrink querymax (make note of this number)
shrink desired=number (use the number from previous command)
exit

If everything goes well you should be able to see the free space in disk management.

A note about gparted: I like gparted and other Linux utilities--I use them a lot myself--but on my ThinkPad it shrinks partition fine but caused it to become unbootable. I had to use a Vista install disk to repair boot. I believe it was caused by Gparted insists on using 255 heads versus ThinkPad's BIOS's 240 heads in disk geometry.

 

well, that worked! i mean, i am now too scared to shrink my volume again, but the extend filesystem command worked!!! my primary volume is now back at 68GB - thanks a ton.

this new R61 is slower than my 6 year old desktop (it took around 2 hrs to restart my system - but i've burnt my finger enough not to interrupt processes). i'll be patient and assume it'll start getting speedier with more use... however illogical that sounds.

 

im glad that your back up and running, but i must be missing something. why did you change any part of your disk anyway?

 

my thinkpad is super-slow. i thought it might be more organized (for my use) and more efficient if i did indexing/searching/defragging volume-wise. i've never partitioned before but it seemed simple enough doing it with disk management. what i wanted to do is this: i have a single volume of 68GB but wanted three partitions- one each for system files, school documents and entertainment. i just began shrinking when the system hung up

 

that makes more sense. windows included utilities have never really been up to par. you can still make those changes with your free space if you like, i would just recommend using a third party utility. gparted works great, partion magic also works. there are many to choose from. but, i think you have problems other than a single partitions. i suggest some more troubleshooting on your system or follow the link on this forum for a clean install. best of luckl.

 

Glad the lost disk space is recovered. For the slow startup, I would start with uninstalling ThinkVantage Client Security Solution and Norton Internet Security, and replace the latter with a less resource-intensive application.

 

well, am not sure I want to perform a clean install - haven't done it before. uninstall is the safer option for me, i think, after this episode.

these guys have loaded the system like crazy with factory-installed software (30 gigs of 68). I am actually trying to find what the different pre-loaded apps do, so I can uninstall all that i would not use. dozens of thinkvantage apps, Win DVD maker/live messenger and stuff like digital line and earthlink that I've never heard of... all i use are office, email, browser and media applications

I am looking at freeware anti-virus software, but not sure if i need the "anti-phishing", "anti-spyware/malware", "firewall" equivalents of norton