Making a partition on my laptop with OS installed. Possible?

So right now I have Vista on my laptop and I might want to put some variation of Linux or XP on it. Or if there's eventually an official beta for Windows 7.


Whatever, I'm saying is there a way to do it without reinstalling Vista? It's not a big deal to get it up and running again, I just not spend half an hour getting everything back together

Edit: I cannot shrink my partitions using Disk Management before someone mentions to do that

 

Start - Computer Management - Disk Management - Right click on a volume - Shrink Volume

Defrag first.

 

In theory, that would work. In reality, most of the time it won't. This is because there are several "unmovable" files. I.E. those that can't be moved WHILE the OS is running. Things like the pagefile and some temp files that the OS keeps open. I am not saying it can NEVER be done, you just have to jump through a few hoops, like running without a pagefile while you shrink the volume. There have been a few articles written calling out the specific files that can cause problems when trying to shrink an active OS partition.

If you use a bootable CD or DVD and a standalone partitioning tool this limitation disappears.

Gary

 

I believe Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 will do what you want quite nicely, even on the hdd you're running off of (provided you've got enough free space on it to play around with). I've shuffled and resized partitions, including the system partition, using ADDS 10.0, on the fly.

 

Hm. I'll try that out (Acronis)

I'll research it some more to see if it works 100%

 

best way is you clone you current OS, save it on other hdd, then format the whole drive, create the needed partition. then restore the clone to the new partition.

can use norton ghost or acronis true image.
more trouble but can save corruption on system file and can act as backup for future restore

 

I use Paragon Partition Manager. It allows things such as redistribute free space etc easily. The GUI is very good for novice.

 

I used GParted Live to partition / resize with OS part intact.. It worked well, and very easy too.

 

Ugh!

I tried to install that Acronis program and it wouldn't work. Then created a problem with my boot.ini!




*System Restores after being able to boot up once*

 

What I Recommend is Partition Magic I tested it for ages from it first version and I works fine for me.Good in redistributing Drive space creating and copy partitions without reinstalling the OS.

 

Why don't you try the GParted Live?????

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-gparted-to-resize-your-windows-vista-partition/

Its very simple...

 

Not saying you are wrong, but how does it deal with moving the pagefile, for example, while the OS is running? That's a slick trick if it can do it.

Gary

 

I do prefer to clone my partitions prior to doing any partition changes, just in case something goes awry. But I don't think your way would work, because I don't think Ghost will restore an image to a SMALLER partition. I know it works for restoring to a larger one. But not sure about the other way around. Have you done this before? The reason I say this is it would require mucking about with the file allocation tables and I didn't think Ghost did anything like that. It wants to put a given sector right back in exactly the same place it was when the image was initially created. Restoring to a smaller sized partition would require restoring that given sector to a different place and thereby also requiring changes to the file tables.

Gary

 

tbh, i never use norton ghost, just use acronis true image
when restore, there got two option, one is restore byte-per-byte and second is just copy back the folder. So, I say if restore to smaller partition, just choose the second method. I have only done this to either a partition which enlarged or same partition, though.

Should be okay

 

I am still skeptical. You might very well be right. These links do tend to support your idea:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/139950-32-ghost-restore-smaller-partition
and
http://www.softpanorama.org/Windows/norton_ghost.shtml
and
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.221170.11

However that seems to be for versions of Ghost prior to v9. (Hurrah! I use Ghost 2003!)

So, I stand corrected. It does appear that Ghost is capable of putting a sector in a different place on the smaller partition and updating the internal NTFS or FAT32 tables to reflect that repositioning. Cool!

I'll have to try this sometime and see what happens.

Gary

P.S. I also found similar links about Acronis:

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=221583
http://forum.insanelymac.com/lofiversion/index.php/t61081.html (scroll down to the Aug 24 2007, 08:12 AM entry)

 

good luck then

 

Check back to my previous reply. I added some links about Acronis also being able to do this. But I added them AFTER your replied here.

Thanks again,
Gary

 

Beats me - so far I've not had a problem with it. If you want me to take a wild shot-in-the-dark guess, I'd imagine that it might involve setting up a temporary start-up task that moves some of the files after a restart. However, we're not talking about moving an entire partition (at least that wasn't my impression), we're talking about taking some of the free space away from an existing partition and creating a new, separate partition out of that free space - unless you've already used up 80% or more of the partition, making the system partition smaller need not involve messing around with any of the unmoveable files.

 

Except that you can't be sure WHERE the pagefile is. Even if you have 90% of the partition free the pagefile CAN still be up near the boundary of the end of the partition. Back when the Defrag had a visual display you could see the unmoveable stuff and they were often times near the end of the partition. I think you may be right, though about the temporary start up task. I haven't used Acronis, so I am guessing from what you are saying, that Acronis requires a restart to actually create the image.

Gary

 

Acronis doesn't need a restart to create the image, you can make it on windows environment, or create a bootable disc using acronis, boot the cd, then you can eiter create image or restore image

while for the above link on your previous post,
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=221583

that should explain the big idea