Having trouble partitioning in Vista.

I'm trying to shrink the volume size on my 160 GB hard drive. In device manager it says I have 60 Gigabytes free, but it will only allow me to shrink the drive by 6.37 Gigabytes. I don't know what the deal is.

 

Just cleared up more space, have 80 gb's free. Still won't let me shrink the volume by more than 6000 mb's

 

You need to use a 3rd party software like Acronis Disk Director Suite 10, the built-in Vista shrink function doesn't allow you to shrink a partition by a lot. I've used ADDS 10 to shrink many Vista partitions, it works great.

 

I'm trying with partition magic. Won't even try to resize my main hard drive. I don't get it!

 

There must be some errors on your drive. Go back into Vista and perform a check disk.

Computer -> Right-click on volume -> Properties -> Tools -> Check Now

And put a check in the first checkbox and click start, it will ask you to reschedule it for the next reboot, click yes. Now reboot the machine and let it scan. Once this is done, try PM again.

 

I have the exact same problem when I was trying to dual boot. I believe there are some limitations with shrinking your current hard drive and that simply having free space does not mean you can shrink your drive by that much free space.

You can try gparted: http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista_with_xp__stepbystep_guide_with_screenshots.htm?page=2

Its pretty decent in my opinion

 

Shrink will reduce the size of your disk only when you have a contiguous open space. It will only shrink your partition to the point of the last used cluster. If the harddisk is relatively full, clear some space, then run chkdsk, then run jkdefrag. The only problem is that jkdefrag will not move system files that are in use. If you can pull your drive and defrag it as a slave, you will get better results

Partition Magic will not work with Vista. Cannot say how well acronis works....

 

Also setting the swap file to a fixed size (min & max the same... prob same amount as ram you have) allowed me to shrink my C drive as I wished. You can change it back to let windows manage it afterwards if you wish.

 

The other thing to check on is how much space you've got set aside for system restore points - I would hazard a guess that the built-in partition manager is not going to allow a partition to be shrunk down below the amount of space needed to satisfy the amount set aside for restore points.

An easy work-around is probably to either make that a really small number, or temporarily turn system restore off, resize the partition, then, if you use the functionality, re-enable system restore.

 

well great news everyone.

my hard drive broke, probably my own doing tonight. disk read error. dells sending me a "new" refurbished one. im furious!!!

 

Why are they sending you a refurbished drive - was the original drive refurbished as well? Also, I wouldn't go assuming the blame for the disk failing unless you were physically manhandling it (tossing it around, beating on it, etc); just trying to run it through its paces and repartition it is not going to break it unless (a) it's really, really old, or (b) there's an underlying manufacturing defect.

 

The Vista shrink function is really limited. The great thing about ADDS10 is that it doesn't care if you have a contiguous open space or not, and it doesn't matter if your pagefile is not fixed either. I've shrunk system partitions, including Vista, to very close to the max limit and didn't have any problems. So far, I haven't had a failure with ADDS10 yet, but I can't say the same for Partition Magic though.

 

Yeah. I think another way to get around it would be to log in in safe mode, no?

 

They're sending me a refurbished drive because that's how dell does customer service. As for the drive breaking. After I tried shrinking the partitions and stuff, I ran chkdsk. When my computer restarted, it refused to go to windows, rather give me a blue screen. I can't reinstall windows, I can't repair windows. So dell is just sending me a 2 year old refurbished replacement...yay!

 

Are they charging you for it? If so, I'd dump them and their refurbished baloney, and go buy a new drive yourself - that'd certainly be cheaper than buying from _Dell.

Also, if you have to send the old one back, make sure you use something like Active@KillDisk to remove all of the data on the old hard drive (which you may have to do by sticking the old drive in an external enclosure so you can connect it to another computer and treat it as just another passive storage medium). _Dell is already fobbing you off with a cheapo refurbished hdd, no sense in leaving anything sensitive on the old hdd that some underpaid _Dell techie might be tempted to try and steal.

 

Man, I bet you simply run in one of those Vista 's (and Microsoft's) 'features' that seem to be made just to create problems to users.
The reason you could not shrink Vista's partition has a name: MTF.
They are files that are placed by Windows in the middle or even at the end of Vista's partition. Just because.

Since these files cannot be moved by the built in defragger and by most free defragger, the users is often stuck with a giant vista partition. God forbids he or she might want to add another OS!!!
The only defragger that was able to defrag the boot files (after killing hibernation, shadowing, error logging and system restore) was Perfect Disk's demo.

Back to your problem: it seems to me that your disk has not broken. You just messed it up with the help of partition magic and scandisk. Here's what I'd do before accepting a refurbished HD.

(I assume that you have already given up the idea of recovering your data.)

1) Get hold of a live Linux distribution (don't worry, you won't have to install it) like Knoppix, or Kanotix or Ubuntu. there is also a GParted distribution.
2) Run it from CD, learn how to become root and launch GParted.
3) If your disk is not broken, as I assume you will be able to see it in the program window.
4) use GParted to repair your partition structure. You might want to wipe it all clean and recreate a suitable structure with 3 primary partitions and one big extended partition.
5) Install Vista in a smaller primary partition you just created.

PS
Please note that threads exposing Vista's dubious 'features' are usually closed fast. You might want to open other thread on how to recreate the partition structure but without saying that you don't like something in Vista. That's called "pointless bickering" here.

 

What threads might those be? There are no end of threads discussing various "dubious" (or worse) features of _Vista. Threads get closed when the discussion degenerates into pointless arguments over purely subjective matters, or when the temperature begins to hot up as the posters let their own egos get too involved in the discussion - as was the case in the thread I'm sure you're thinking about.

 

Thanks for the advice, I'll be working on this tonight. If there was a way to recover my data, would you know of it?

 

Well Linux definitely sees my 160 GB hard drive. I just don't know what to do to get it working again.

 

Ok, the good news is that you don't have to take a refurbished HD.
Now, let's see what can be done here.
You should post a picture of Gparted's window. The one that shows the partitions on your hd. It is still possible to save the Boot partition (a small -just a few tens of MB - partition that Dell uses for diagnostics). If not, well, you can wipe it all out and begin from scratch.

Here's the plan:
1. We must indentify the primary partitions. The reason for this is that you can have only three of them and probably you will have to sacrifice one of the existing partitions (maybe Media direct or the recovery partition) in order to accomodate an extended partition.
2. Format vista's partition
3. Shrink and rearrange partitions in order to have three primary partitions a) Dell's boot partition b) an alternate OS or recovery partition c) Vista's partition d) an extended partition (which you could subsequently split in as many logical partition you desire - or just keep in a single chunk)
4. Install vista in its new partition

Before starting to work you must be sure to have an installation disk for the OS.

 

Just a small quibble: why only three primary partitions? As far as I know, you can have either (i) four primary partitions, or (ii) three primary partitions, plus one extended partition. Or am I just misreading your post?

 

Yes, that's one of the threads I was thinking about.A thread was closed with many questions still unanswered. It was not even possible to clarify certain points (like what I meant by it's not possible to choose the interface colors - something I recalled when I tried to do that in my niece's laptop this year).

 

You're right.
It's just that I could not do without an extended partition and forgot to mention the other option. The reason is that having an extended partition gives much more flexibility (you can add other OSes, or separate data from programs from personal documents, makes defragging more efficient, and can be useful to save your data when the OS partition goes haywire).

But you're right, the OP could as well use four primary partitions.

 

I forgot this question.
Yes there are ways to recover data.
It seems that you have just messed up your partition table. You might want to try to repair it with TestDisk using a live CD (Linux live CDs as you know can be found everywhere, it is also possibile to create a Windows XP live CD - lookup "bartPE" on google).

Testdisk is a very powerful but not very user friendly recovery utility.
If that cannot recover your partition structure you'll have to try some other recovery software. It could be wise to take the disk out of your laptop and connect it to a desktop system.
If you think your data is worth saving, I suggest you start a new thread seeking advice on how to do that. You'll receive help from many other NBRers

 

Here's another one.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=354162