Vista disk manager wont let me shrink my 1tb hdd

[joshwood123]

I have vista 64 bit, and i am trying to shrink my partition by more than 1129mb smaller than it is normally... i have done things like moving the paging file to another hdd, and i even tried defragmenting it, and nothing helped... i DO have ubuntu on it, could that be the culprit? I would be thankful for any help
-Josh
system specs
-NZXT Nemesis Elite case...Black
-MSI P45 PLATINUM intel p45 chipset
-CORE 2 QUAD Q9550 2.83Ghz--currently running at ~~3.0Ghz
-Windows vista H.P. 64bit
-8GB G-Skill DDR2 SDRAM 800mhz
-610W PSU
-1TB hdd
-30gb SSD
-GPU, a Sapphire 1GB GDDR5 256-bit HD Radeon 4870 <br />
-Lite-on blue ray drive..

 

[tweaker3]

With Vista . click "Start", right click" My Computer" click "Manage" click "Disk Management" then right click on the Drive (half way down in a shaded block) you want to change" Drive Paths" or you can "Shrink Volume" to create a new partition.

Just did it the other day so I could have Vista 64, Widows 7 64 beta, and XP on the same drive. should work for ya

 

[joshwood123]

I have tried that, and it wont let me shrink it by more than 1gb...
and it says the size of the possible shrink may be smaller if file paging, or snapshots is enabled?
i disable the drives paging file, but what is snapshots?

 

[MrLinux]

The disk tools in Vista are rubbish, you need something like Partition Magic;
make certain you back-up any important data before doing anything to the partition table; one error/problem/power-glitch/whatever and all your data can be history in less time than it takes to fill your underwear.

 

[Guest]

The disk tools in Vista are rubbish, you need something like Partition Magic;
make certain you back-up any important data before doing anything to the partition table; one error/problem/power-glitch/whatever and all your data can be history in less time than it takes to fill your underwear.

PM8 does not work with Vista and looks like Norton is not going to make it 64 bit compatible any time soon. I tried Avanquest's Partition Commander 11 and it did not work on my Vista 64 bit, even though it is supposed to.

 

[sub mesa]

You need to defrag your disk first, the shrink only works if the end of the partition is free of any stored data.

 

[Paperdoc]

I've not done this, so my suggestion is just a thought, not a known good solution. Shrink it as much as VISTA will allow. Reboot, then go into the hard drive and Defrag it. Reboot, then try to shrink again to your final desired size. I'm pretty sure you are right to do this with the Paging File removed, and then restore it when you're done.

 

[RetiredChief]

Did this on my wife's new computer about 4 weeks ago. Had the same problem.
What happens is that Vista some times writes files (Hidden) and will only allow a "Shrink" up to this point. As Paperdoc said Try removing page file. Had trouble doing this as Vista did not like a Zero page file. You also need to disable Hibernation and reboot (I think this was the culprit). I did this from the dos prompt. I will see if I can find this and added it to this post (someone else had this problem.

 

[sub mesa]

Any system files in use as 'locked' and may not be relocated/moved by defragmenting, so they stay at the end of the partition which hinders the shrinking process. You can only shrink to a size when that portion of the partition is completely free of any active data blocks.

 

[sub mesa]

Stuff like Partition Magic actually copies the data that's on the location you want to shrink, back to the beginning of the partition. Because this happens on system files too, this process runs in a pre-boot environment, just after the windows loading screen.

Personally i don't trust partition magic that well; it had bugs in the past and still i hear stories of data corruption/loss by using this utility. However, it can do things windows itself can't.

 

[RetiredChief]

Step to disable hibernation ( and re-enable

Luckily, though, Hibernation is easy enough to disable via the command line. Here's how:
Click Start (or the Windows Logo) -> All Programs -> Accessories.
In this folder you will see an entry labeled Command Prompt. Right-click this entry and select "Run as administrator."
At the command prompt, type "powercfg -h off" (without the quotes) and press Enter. Unfortunately there's no confirmation message to indicate whether or not you were successful. But we can confirm this for ourselves by typing "dir /a:h c:\hiberfil.sys" (again, without the quotes) and pressing Enter. If we were successful then you should get a message which says "File Not Found."
Voila! We have just disabled Hibernation and freed up some disk space. But if you decide that you want to enable Hibernation later you can do so by following steps 1-3 again, but this time specify "on" instead of "off" during step 3.

Also take a look at this:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/working-around-windows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems/#

 

[Paperdoc]

Nice details to know, RetiredChief. Thanks for this posting!