Vista Partitions... won't change...

Okay, foolhardy me thinks... "I know i'll resize my boot partition
down to 40Gb and make the rest of the space on my disk available as my
data store so I only have to rebuild the boot partition in a failure"

Now I have decided to give a little more space to the main partition
as 40Gb is not quite enough - tried to shrink the data volume using
the Vista Disk Management tool. It will only allow me to recover 6Gb
out of 200Gb even though there is only 100Gb of data on the partition.

Also, even recovering 6Gb, I cannot allocate that free space to the
40Gb partition...

Before I spend my entire life looking for a solution - has anyone got
a recommendation that has worked for them and has anyone else suffered
the same issue and resolved it?

Cheers,

Rob.

The built-in shrink utility will be able to decrease the partition size till
it bumps against the first unmovable/locked system file. In theory, the
only locked file on a data store partition should be the System Volume
Information file and the recycle bin.

You can try 2 things.

1. Use a 3rd party defrag tool (PerfectDisk) to defrag the partition.
These
tools do a better job than the built in tool to consolidate free space. If
the graphic
still shows a bunch of files toward the end of the partition you can perform
a boot time defrag on the drive. This will allow the tool to defrag even the
locked system files - if you have set it to do so in the tools options.

2. If you want to decrease the partition further you will need a 3rd
party Disk
Management tool. I use Acronis Disk Director suite. The latest posted
version (ver 10.0 build 2160) is 100% Vista compatible. After installing the
program, create the emergency CD. Reboot the computer and boot up with
this CD. Do your partition work from there. You will not be hampered with
locked files.


--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)



<> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
> Okay, foolhardy me thinks... "I know i'll resize my boot partition
> down to 40Gb and make the rest of the space on my disk available as my
> data store so I only have to rebuild the boot partition in a failure"
>
> Now I have decided to give a little more space to the main partition
> as 40Gb is not quite enough - tried to shrink the data volume using
> the Vista Disk Management tool. It will only allow me to recover 6Gb
> out of 200Gb even though there is only 100Gb of data on the partition.
>
> Also, even recovering 6Gb, I cannot allocate that free space to the
> 40Gb partition...
>
> Before I spend my entire life looking for a solution - has anyone got
> a recommendation that has worked for them and has anyone else suffered
> the same issue and resolved it?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rob.
>

On 22 Jun, 10:21, dkinth...@googlemail.com wrote:
> Okay, foolhardy me thinks... "I know i'll resize my boot partition
> down to 40Gb and make the rest of the space on my disk available as my
> data store so I only have to rebuild the boot partition in a failure"
>
> Now I have decided to give a little more space to the main partition
> as 40Gb is not quite enough - tried to shrink the data volume using
> the Vista Disk Management tool. It will only allow me to recover 6Gb
> out of 200Gb even though there is only 100Gb of data on the partition.
>
> Also, even recovering 6Gb, I cannot allocate that free space to the
> 40Gb partition...
>
> Before I spend my entire life looking for a solution - has anyone got
> a recommendation that has worked for them and has anyone else suffered
> the same issue and resolved it?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rob.

In addition, for some reason the second partition is a system
partition according to the Disk Management - i don't remember setting
it that way. Any ideas? Also, it is a primary partition and the C
drive that I boot from is the logical partition. I don't remember
setting that up either!

Now i'm quite stuck so could do with some advice.

What I said previously still applies.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)



<> wrote in message
news: ups.com...
> On 22 Jun, 10:21, dkinth...@googlemail.com wrote:
>> Okay, foolhardy me thinks... "I know i'll resize my boot partition
>> down to 40Gb and make the rest of the space on my disk available as my
>> data store so I only have to rebuild the boot partition in a failure"
>>
>> Now I have decided to give a little more space to the main partition
>> as 40Gb is not quite enough - tried to shrink the data volume using
>> the Vista Disk Management tool. It will only allow me to recover 6Gb
>> out of 200Gb even though there is only 100Gb of data on the partition.
>>
>> Also, even recovering 6Gb, I cannot allocate that free space to the
>> 40Gb partition...
>>
>> Before I spend my entire life looking for a solution - has anyone got
>> a recommendation that has worked for them and has anyone else suffered
>> the same issue and resolved it?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Rob.
>
> In addition, for some reason the second partition is a system
> partition according to the Disk Management - i don't remember setting
> it that way. Any ideas? Also, it is a primary partition and the C
> drive that I boot from is the logical partition. I don't remember
> setting that up either!
>
> Now i'm quite stuck so could do with some advice.
>

On 22 Jun, 13:23, "Richard Urban" <richardurbanREMOVET...@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> What I said previously still applies.
>
> --
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Urban
> Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
> (For email, remove the obvious from my address)
>
> <dkinth...@googlemail.com> wrote in message
>
> news: ups.com...
>
>
>
> > On 22 Jun, 10:21, dkinth...@googlemail.com wrote:
> >> Okay, foolhardy me thinks... "I know i'll resize my boot partition
> >> down to 40Gb and make the rest of the space on my disk available as my
> >> data store so I only have to rebuild the boot partition in a failure"
>
> >> Now I have decided to give a little more space to the main partition
> >> as 40Gb is not quite enough - tried to shrink the data volume using
> >> the Vista Disk Management tool. It will only allow me to recover 6Gb
> >> out of 200Gb even though there is only 100Gb of data on the partition.
>
> >> Also, even recovering 6Gb, I cannot allocate that free space to the
> >> 40Gb partition...
>
> >> Before I spend my entire life looking for a solution - has anyone got
> >> a recommendation that has worked for them and has anyone else suffered
> >> the same issue and resolved it?
>
> >> Cheers,
>
> >> Rob.
>
> > In addition, for some reason the second partition is a system
> > partition according to the Disk Management - i don't remember setting
> > it that way. Any ideas? Also, it is a primary partition and the C
> > drive that I boot from is the logical partition. I don't remember
> > setting that up either!
>
> > Now i'm quite stuck so could do with some advice.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Cheers and many thanks Richard.

Easy ! Just defrag the hard drive, then shrink it again !

<> wrote in message
news: oups.com...
> Okay, foolhardy me thinks... "I know i'll resize my boot partition
> down to 40Gb and make the rest of the space on my disk available as my
> data store so I only have to rebuild the boot partition in a failure"
>
> Now I have decided to give a little more space to the main partition
> as 40Gb is not quite enough - tried to shrink the data volume using
> the Vista Disk Management tool. It will only allow me to recover 6Gb
> out of 200Gb even though there is only 100Gb of data on the partition.
>
> Also, even recovering 6Gb, I cannot allocate that free space to the
> 40Gb partition...
>
> Before I spend my entire life looking for a solution - has anyone got
> a recommendation that has worked for them and has anyone else suffered
> the same issue and resolved it?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rob.
>

wrote:
....
> In addition, for some reason the second partition is a system
> partition according to the Disk Management - i don't remember setting
> it that way. Any ideas? Also, it is a primary partition and the C
> drive that I boot from is the logical partition. I don't remember
> setting that up either!...

Vista always calls its own partition C: even if it's a logical
partition -- that's the way I did it on purpose. Vista must
have a primary partition (somewhere) to put its boot files,
but the remainder of Vista can be anywhere on any disk and in
any kind of partition.

As Richard said, Acronis DD won't care one way or the other.
I've used it for several years and had no problems.

On 23 Jun, 02:13, Don <don195...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> dkinth...@googlemail.com wrote:
>
> ...
>
> > In addition, for some reason the second partition is a system
> > partition according to the Disk Management - i don't remember setting
> > it that way. Any ideas? Also, it is a primary partition and the C
> > drive that I boot from is the logical partition. I don't remember
> > setting that up either!...
>
> Vista always calls its own partition C: even if it's a logical
> partition -- that's the way I did it on purpose. Vista must
> have a primary partition (somewhere) to put its boot files,
> but the remainder of Vista can be anywhere on any disk and in
> any kind of partition.
>
> As Richard said, Acronis DD won't care one way or the other.
> I've used it for several years and had no problems.

Thanks for all the advice - there is a further problem that Acronis is
not helping with.

Apparently I have bad sectors on the disk and that is making it
impossible to move/resize or do anything with the partitions.

So I guess i need a new disk - and i have no money spare - and i give
up!

Isn't there any way to get the Acronis program (being run from a boot
disk) to ignore the bad sectors and work around them?

ARGH!

On Mon, 25 Jun 2007 22:09:00 -0000, wrote:

>On 23 Jun, 02:13, Don <don195...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> dkinth...@googlemail.com wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>
>> > In addition, for some reason the second partition is a system
>> > partition according to the Disk Management - i don't remember setting
>> > it that way. Any ideas? Also, it is a primary partition and the C
>> > drive that I boot from is the logical partition. I don't remember
>> > setting that up either!...
>>
>> Vista always calls its own partition C: even if it's a logical
>> partition -- that's the way I did it on purpose. Vista must
>> have a primary partition (somewhere) to put its boot files,
>> but the remainder of Vista can be anywhere on any disk and in
>> any kind of partition.
>>
>> As Richard said, Acronis DD won't care one way or the other.
>> I've used it for several years and had no problems.
>
>Thanks for all the advice - there is a further problem that Acronis is
>not helping with.
>
>Apparently I have bad sectors on the disk and that is making it
>impossible to move/resize or do anything with the partitions.
>
>So I guess i need a new disk - and i have no money spare - and i give
>up!

Have you tried a disk repair directly from Windows?

Right click on the "bad" drive, properties, tools, error checking.
Since you must be using NTFS it is pretty good at repairing itself
including cross linked and bad sector problems.

If you can't get directly to Windows' repair try disabling Acronis if
that is interfering and bringing up it's own junk.

Ignoring bad sectors is playing with fire.

The hard drive manufacturers include a generous amount of spare sectors when
the drive is new. As sectors in a drive go bad (and they do) they are
silently remapped to a good sector. The hard drive diagnostic electronics
does this. Any information that can be saved - is saved.

By the time you physically see chkdsk tell you that you have bad sectors,
all of the spares have already been used. You could have hundreds of bad
sectors before you see the first one with chkdak. Chkdsk doesn't remap them
(because there are no spares left), so chkdsk disables the sector from being
accessed.

So you can see, your drive is likely quite sick.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)



<> wrote in message
news: ups.com...
> On 23 Jun, 02:13, Don <don195...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> dkinth...@googlemail.com wrote:
>>
>> ...
>>
>> > In addition, for some reason the second partition is a system
>> > partition according to the Disk Management - i don't remember setting
>> > it that way. Any ideas? Also, it is a primary partition and the C
>> > drive that I boot from is the logical partition. I don't remember
>> > setting that up either!...
>>
>> Vista always calls its own partition C: even if it's a logical
>> partition -- that's the way I did it on purpose. Vista must
>> have a primary partition (somewhere) to put its boot files,
>> but the remainder of Vista can be anywhere on any disk and in
>> any kind of partition.
>>
>> As Richard said, Acronis DD won't care one way or the other.
>> I've used it for several years and had no problems.
>
> Thanks for all the advice - there is a further problem that Acronis is
> not helping with.
>
> Apparently I have bad sectors on the disk and that is making it
> impossible to move/resize or do anything with the partitions.
>
> So I guess i need a new disk - and i have no money spare - and i give
> up!
>
> Isn't there any way to get the Acronis program (being run from a boot
> disk) to ignore the bad sectors and work around them?
>
> ARGH!
>