Disk partition sizing

Hi there

I've just started dual booting Vista and XP on my laptop, I already had Vista installed and when I used diskpart it only shrank my partition by 5.8gb, I now have 3 partitions, and the 2 used by vista amount to about 90gb with about 50% of that space free.

I am a little concerned that 5.8gb isn't quite enough for XP as I may wan't to install some bits and pieces and after installing the required nvidia drivers and sundry other drivers (broadcom wlan, synaptics touchpad etc.) I only have <2gb of space spare on the XP partition. And if I need to install anything to that partition I may end up running out of space

Aside from installing stuff to the partitions used by Vista (C and D drives) is there anyway I can get more space?

Thanks in advance for any help/advice

 

Why can't you resize one of the 2 other partitions and add that space to the 5.8 gb one?

 

you need a way to defragment the MFT files.
Basically these are files that MS places in the middle and at the end of the partition of windows and that cannot be moved by ordinary defragmentation software.
You need a defragmenter capable to run from outside windows. This is usually done by rebooting the machine and running a defrag routine before windows actually loads.
The only one I was able to find was Diskperfect 8, whose 30 days free trial allows you to defrag the systems files and then proceed with a massive shrinking. My Vista partition would not go under 80 or 90 GB: after defragging the system files and temporily disabling pagefile, hibernation and boot error log, I could have shrunk it to a mere 10 GB.

Try to find other posts in this very forum for "shrink Vista".

Hope this helps.

 

If I knew how to I would, I'm kind of in uncharted territory though...

EDIT: I think I've found out how to do the resize of the Vista second partition (D drive, C drive being the primary Vista partition which I want to leave alone) using Gparted or the computer management tools in Vista itself but I can't find any relevant info on how to increase the size of the XP partition once I've freed up space on the D drive...

Once I've freed the space up would I able to re-install XP, and at the same time remove the 5.8gb partition and create a whole new XP partition which includes both the 5.8gb I've already freed up and the extra space I free up from the D drive? - I'm planning on trying to get an extra 10gb making 1 XP primary partiton of 15.8gb just to be on the safe side.

Or would it be easier to use my full PC backup I've made using the Vista Ultimate full PC backup facility, then resize the D drive and then install XP again?

Thanks for the advice, some more would be greatly appreciated as I'm kind of fumbling around in the dark...

 

I always use Gparted, but I have been having trouble with using it on a Vista partition that was created by the vendor. Although I might be using an outdated version.

That aside, once you have Gparted up and running, it is extremely easy to cut space from one partition and add it to another. Give yourself 5 minutes in the program and I'm sure you'll figure it out. Essentially, you click the partition you want to cut from, resize it to what you want. It then becomes "unallocated". Then you click the one you want to add to and add that unallocated space.

One more thought though... Is the D partition the "recovery" partition for Vista? If so, be cautious about how much you cut if you intend to do regular Vista backups. That extra space may be needed in the future to store the growing backup file.

 

No the D partition is a second Vista partition named Data that was already there when I got the machine - probably created by Acer when Vista was installed - the HDD was split into 3 partitions, 1 primary C drive with windows on , 1 D drive that was totally empty and a recovery partition that's hidden.

Now though I have those 3 partitions and a 4th partition which is the 5.8gb XP primary partition that I want to increase by about 10gb.

The D partition is basically where I've got all my stuff stored now (25gb out of 51gb worth of stuff), such as a couple of games, a number of setup programs for applications, my docs, mp3's, pics etc. I don't want to lose any of that data though - will resizing using gparted affect what's on the D partition?

Mainly I don't want to have to re-install anything that I've got already in Vista as that takes more time up...

 

Every patition resizing program suggests you back up your files before resizing a partition. However, I rarely do. You run a small risk that if some error were to happen during the resizing your partition table info might be corrupted somehow. For someone with a lot of partition know-how, this is fixable.

I have never had this happen before using Gparted. Still, I hold my breath while repartitioning.

My thought process is, an OS can be reinstalled. But 7 years worth of lost photographs can't. So just as a precausion it is always wise to backup the stuff which is most important to you off the computer. A DVD maybe.

 

DVD - no, I have a bad history of scratching DVD's or getting a corrupt burn...

I've got a couple of 250gb external USB HDD's I use as backup areas. I can move everything off the D partition.

Afaik apart from the one game I have on there nothing on the D partition is installed, it's just setup progs, mp3's etc and the game I can re-install so to be on the safe side I thnk I'll completely move everything to my external HDD. I'll empty out the D partition but obviously not format it to make sure

That way I know I won't have any data loss - well apart from having to reinstall the game I have on there but that's a 5 min job anyway.

Thanks for the tips