Re: Why only a small shrink possible in Vista?

Peltio wrote:
Someone had the guts to write:

My plan was to shrink the 120 GB NTFS partition down to about half that, then install Solaris 10 on the other 60 GB and dual boot the laptop.

When I try to resize the partition in Vista, it will allow me to shrink it by 17 GB. Considering there is over 70 GB of free space, I can't see why it will only let me shrink it by a mere 17 GB. What about the other 53 GB?

It's because Windows (XP and Vista) place some unmovable files in the middle and near the end of its partition. Try a google search or MTF files. Ordinary defrag progs can't move those files and the shrinker won't let you resize the partition below the last file.

Solution:
1.) Temporarily disable and delete those files and the mechanism that create them
2.) Use a third party defragger to move the other MTF files. The defragger should be capacble of running 'at boot', that is before windows starts to make those files unmovable. One such defragger is Perfect Disk 8: it has a 30 days free trial and I used to shrink my Vista partition.


How do you run it at boot - from a CD ??


As for point 1) I solved by disabling the pagefile, the hibernation file, the shadow copy mechanism, and the boot error log. Most of these cna be disabled via the control panel/system manger tabs. Hibernation needs an admin prompt to issue the command powercfg -h off. (use on to turn it on again); there must be a similar command to reduce to zero the space for shadow copies. Google around and you'll find the solution.


how do you get that admin prompt to issue powercfg -h off? When I try to run it, it gives an error about permission denined. I read somewhere that if one presses control, shift and enter to get an admin promt, but that does not work for me.


Don't forget to delete the hibernation and paging files under C:\ if they're still there.

Will do. I'd shrunk pagefile to 300 MB, but I will disable that completely.

Once you've done this, run the defrag program with proper settings (defrag system files, and defrag free space so that you'll have every thing stuffed at the beginning of the disk).

Then you'll be able to shrink all the free space you'd like.

cheers,
Peltio

.

Relevant Pages

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