Partition resizing in Vista 64...any demos that work?

So I've searched the stickies here and some of the other posts and I've tried both Acronis and Paragon Partition, and both install just fine, but when it comes down to actually resizing my partition, they both state that the "Demo version can't do this". Well...that's the whole purpose I wanted the demo!

Does anyone have any suggestions here?

Thanks!
RM

 

I have the same trouble with Vista 32. I've taken a look around the web, and this seems to be a widespread problem. What are the good solutions?

 

Gparted, Easeus free edition (32-bit), etc are free.

 

Some info in this similar thread here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=380801

Anyway... did you get the free-forever version of Paragon?... I think that doesn't work on 64-bit... but the paid/pro/full version has a downloadable free trial for 30 days or something (same w/ Easeus) and I bet that trial works on 64-bit.

gparted livecd/liveusb is another option... as is something like Ultimate Boot CD or SystemRescueCD.

 

Ehm...stupid question maybe but have you tried using disk management in windows itself?

 

Yepp - I'd suggest the same - there are limits to the Windows utility - for example it can't move th MFT - but otherwise does the job just as good.

Unlessyou Master File Table is in the way use the Windows Utility.

 

Gparted did the job for me. I had the same frustration with the Windows utility that I've read about in many places. I wanted to shrink my windows partition significantly to about a third of the available space, and the included utility wouldn't shrink it beyond about 55% of the available space.

 

That's most likely due to the Master File Table - the Windows Utility cannot move it, while some applications can.

 

Thats because there are files placed in those sectors...try a defrag before using the disk management tool

 

Of course. It's quite useless. If it acted as one of these paid versions and actually did what it should do, then this wouldn't be an issue.

 

Did that. I used defraggler hoping that that issue would at least go away somewhat, but it actually eliminated the small amount that I did have to work with pre-defrag. It went from 50gb used, 100 free, yet only ~35gb movable, to ~50gb used, 100 free, and now 0gb moveable. Yes, zero. When I go into Windows Disk Mgmt it tells me I have a whopping zero GB that I can move.

 

It sounds like GParted is a viable option. I read into that yesterday actually, but it sounds like it "breaks" the harddrive or something, since you need to "repair windows" afterwards? Surely this can't be good for your OS stability?

 

I had heard using a Linux based app to resize a Windows partition could be problematic, too. Out of frustration, I gave it a try, though and it didn't give me any trouble. I only resized the Windows partition to about double the size of the used space (in my case 25 GB used on a partition reduced from 55 GB to 40 GB). I didn't have much installed yet, so I didn't have much to lose.

 

I've been using Gparted via USB boot to resize partitions for years and it works fine. I've never had to repair Windows afterwards. The most I've had to do was watch Windows run a chkdsk on first boot, probably due to the new partition size differing from the one Windows expected to see.