How to resize a partition in Windows Vista
Because programs such as Partition Magic don’t work on Windows Vista, some of you may be wondering how to resize partitions without losing any data. The good news is that you probably won’t be needing those programs because Windows Vista can manage your partition resizing.
To resize a partition with Windows Vista, follow these steps:
Be sure to back up any valuable information, because there is a slight chance that data can be lost when dealing with partitions.
1) Click on the Start menu
2) Right click on Computer and click on Manage
3) You may get a User Account Control dialog here; just click Continue
4) In the left pane, open up the Storage category and click on Disk Management
5) Here, you will find your partitions for your disks. Right click on the partition you’d like to modify.
6) Click on Extend Volume or Shrink Volume to extend or shrink the selected partition.
If this doesn’t work for you because some options were greyed out, you can check out this post for an alternate method.
Was I able to help you? If you still have a question, click here and I will get back to you with an answer.
February 28th, 2007 at 9:21 am
Very nice documentation. It worked like a charm.
March 3rd, 2007 at 9:53 pm
Why is it that my hard drive is only half full but i cant shrink the volume. It says that the available shrinking size is 0 mb?
anyone? at one point in time my hard drive was completely full but i deleted half of it. Is this why?
does it have something to do with a system restore point. cause none of them go back that far when my hard drive was full! not even if i enable the “older than 5 days”
anyone i’m getting frustrated!
March 3rd, 2007 at 10:10 pm
is it a basic or dynamic drive?
March 4th, 2007 at 1:39 am
hmmm…basic?
its a regular hard drive.
I used to be able to make apartition and shrink my partitions. but not anymore
says available shrink size 0!
March 4th, 2007 at 2:47 pm
you need it to be a dynamic drive, other OS’s like Linux won’t like it though if use dynamic but u’ll be able to do much more with it in Vista
-
March 7th, 2007 at 4:25 am
hey guys i need help here . i have the recovery partition that comes with hp but when i installed vista i can’t find it and i used this method to delete it but i can’t . i want to delete it ! it takes 8gb !!! so plz help
March 7th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
it’s most possible that you are using that partition when your computer is booted? Try booting up with the CD and deleting the partition that way
March 9th, 2007 at 3:56 am
yeah i tried but it’s bot in the liste when i boot with the cd ! what i gotta do ?
March 12th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Is that P e ni s in the picture of Vista’s background? Damn! Looks like it!
March 13th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Hey hasso, try Paragon Partition Manager (http://www.partition-manager.com/). It is Vista compatible. You can use it to delete your HP recovery partition.
March 15th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Damn YoYo… That was just too hillarious! You can see a little bush action too. LOL
March 21st, 2007 at 5:00 am
It just only can shrink spaces, can not extend spaces, right?
dose any solution to extend “C” spaces???
March 21st, 2007 at 7:26 am
It can extend as well
March 21st, 2007 at 1:00 pm
Try to Create New simple Volume …. but got “not enough space available” …. I have enough space … do you know how to solve it ? Am I having too many partitions ?
March 25th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
My primary boot for vista is the secondary partition on my HDD-0 drive. I have sucessfully shrunk partition 0, XP install, but now am unable to extend my partition 1, Vista install. Disk Management is saying 39.06GB unallocated. The Vista partition has the Extend Volume option grayed out. My XP install partition now says Shrink and Extend. Any ideas on how to get Vista to extend the boot partition?
March 25th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Can I shrink one partion on windows xp and extend this with installed vista? I have both systems. Can be there some bad effects in working of Vista
March 25th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Diablo: I’m still looking into your situation. What kind of partition is your Vista partition?
Yatzeck: You can most definitely do that, although I’m not sure what you mean by “bad effects.”
March 26th, 2007 at 12:36 pm
I tried to shrink my C drive, but the leat i can shrik is 30 Gb. I have 120 GB disk.
I want to make 3 partition.
Plz advice me. What to do? I tried partition magic 8.0 but it didn’t worked.
help is needed
March 26th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
i mean if change the size of partitions in windows Xp, Vista will work normally right?
March 26th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Prodigal: It’s probably because that 30GB is in use. Allocated space should be in black. Just right click and choose New Volume.
Yatzeck: No, as long as you don’t change the partition type, your Vista should work fine
March 29th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
I’m having the same issue Dan was above. What do you have to do to make the drive dynamic? I’ve got 120 GB free, but Disk Management isn’t recognizing it. Any suggestions?
March 29th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
You can convert a disk dynamic but not a volume. You DO NOT want to do that if you have more than one operating system installed on one hard-drive.
You just have to right-click Disk 0, Disk 1, or whichever, and choose convert to dynamic disk. Don’t click on C,D,E… those are volumes.
This link might prove helpful: http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/library/354e5163-f388-4354-984c-ea4e4206694c1033.mspx?mfr=true
If you have more than one partition, I don’t think it’s a good idea to convert your drive to dynamic.
March 30th, 2007 at 11:12 am
why is the shrink size restricted in vista???how can i disable the snapshots and pagefiles??my hard drive is 120 n a can shrink only 50% of it??? do u expect me to keep 50% of my hard drive for C only???how can i create my own partition????
March 30th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Are you talking about the shadow copies? You can disable the shadow copy and backup service in your services manager. Also, make sure to disable automated system restore at the backup restore center. I have no idea why you cannot shrink it all. Although Windows Vista Partition tool is handy, it sometimes gives more of a headache =\
Perhaps you have that space used for virtual memory… but i doubt it’d be that much…
April 3rd, 2007 at 3:55 pm
does anybody know how to resize c: partition which contain vista itself….i really getting mad here with my hard disk space in c: left only about 200MB even thought total hard disk space 20g…
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Nazmin I don’t really get what you’re saying.
April 3rd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
I’m having just the same problem as Nazmin. I have a 500gb hard drive, partitoned into 7. My vista C drive is 50 gb, but although I am moving Program Files to another partition I can see that’s going to be too small. I tried to create more space by shrinking one of the partitions by 10gb. This now says on right clicking, “New Simple Volume”. But when I click on C drive “extend volume” is greyed out If I format the Simple Volume, the same occurs.
Surely one can extend the C drive???
April 3rd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
kjc: does the free space come before or after your C drive. Also are you booting into your logical or primary partition?
April 6th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
everyone who has had a problem, come back in a day or two. I just found out an awesome alternative to this. I will write an article about this soon.
April 8th, 2007 at 3:52 am
Same problem we have tried many different things but none work,, we even made an extra free space but would not allow me to use it to make C drive bigger..
Please help
Thanks
April 8th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Have you checked out this link?
http://vistarewired.com/2007/04/07/how-to-work-with-partitions-in-windows-vista-xp-when-disk-management-doesnt-work/
April 8th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Have anyone having trouble resizing usind disk management succeeded with GPart?
April 8th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Yes, I used GParted to extend Vista partition. Never used it to shrink a partition though. All the rest partition programs failed (Vista default disk manager, Acronis DiskDirector) except GParted. I made a backup, and then proceeded extending a partition with gparted. It worked for hours, because it copied all the data from the old partition start sector to the new one. At the end I had to launch a Vista recovery console and fix the boot, because Vista wouldn’t boot from that extended partition. This was not a problem with a partition. GParted didn’t corrupt it. It’s just Vista didn’t find some boot records where it expected it (I think its new boot manager, BCD, is very fragile). But after I fixed it with the recovery console, everything worked.
GParted is a very reliable tool. It saved me on multiple occasions.
April 8th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
alexei, have you tried the diskpart.exe
Extended partitions cannot be used to boot
April 8th, 2007 at 5:36 pm
To Albert:
No, I haven’t tried diskpart to resize partitions. I used it once to create a partition and I found that it has a very unintuitive user interface. You might think the interface of fdisk (linux tool) is bad. Diskpart is even worse in this respect.
I know that extended partitions can’t be used for booting. In my previous message I worked with a primary partition.
In fact, I’m using GParted right now as I write this message to copy a 24GB XP partition to another partition. It just finished successfully. I didn’t notice it before but GParted actually is just a shell on top of other linux partition management tools. In my case it used ntfsresize, ntfsclone and dd to do the work.
April 8th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Thanks for the comments. I am going to try out GPart and if it works, then hopefully it’ll be the final post I’ll be making about partitions. I am so confused as to why Microsoft decided to make such an awesome tool, but when you try to use it… they gray out the options
April 15th, 2007 at 7:28 am
Read the mails, having trouble also, tried the vista method to extend c drive, it is greyed out ..no go….tried alternative method …no go…. i have c drive with vista on… d drive with xp on ….and k drive new volume, when type in extend i get the message .” there is not enough usable free space on the specified disk to extend the volume” tried deleting k drive making it free space, still alternative method gives the same message.
any ideas please??
April 15th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
I haven’t tried before, but everyone has been talking about GPart. You might want to give that a try
April 16th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Thanks Albert……..had a look at this program but se it downloads as a ISO………I always have mega trouble with them ……..so hopefully there i another way
April 16th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
bryfly: I will have a tutorial on ISOs soon
April 17th, 2007 at 1:13 am
Trying to Create New simple Volume …. but getting “not enough space available†….error. I have enough space. Any idea how to overcome this?
April 17th, 2007 at 10:28 pm
I have a question for everyone having problems. Are all the partitions that are trying to be resized formatted NTFS or are some formatted FAT 32? I believe they all need to be formatted NTFS for this to work.
April 18th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Hello,
I have the same problem as Diablo (March 25th) :
36 GB Disk with 16GB on Partition 1 (XP), 20GB on Partition 2 (Vista64)
Vista installed the bootloader in P1 in order to multiboot, so the XP partition is active/boot.
It seems the partition manager tool is unable to resize P2 in order to take advantage of free space between P1 and P2… That is, if I have some free space at the end of the disk, I can extend P2 to take it, but if I shrink P1 in order to get more space for P2, I will end up with unallocated free space after P1, which I cannot use to extend P2…
I would think it is because it cannot MOVE the partition, as opposed to a shrink or extend to free space after the partition, where the beginning of the partition wouldn’t move…
I tried Paragon Partition Manager 8.5, which is touting Vista Support, but I ran into the same limitation : If I try to extend the Vista partition using free space before it on the disk, the software tells me that some files are in use on the Vista partition (no kidding) and helpfully asks to restart. I thought it would do the move on restart before the OS loads, like Partition Magic used to, but it just really restarts, as if it was going to help anything…
If Vista capable
April 18th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Sorry, me again, I couldn’t help notice that in the top article, you provide a picture on step 5) that is similar to my setup : imagine you go ahead and shrink your C: (XP) partition, will you then be able to extend the D: (Vista) using this free space between C and D ? If yes, I would really like to know how…
April 19th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Ok, final words on this, Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 did the trick (only the 260 build is Vista-compatible). I used it to build a bootable CD, which allowed me (finally) to MOVE down the partition and thus occupy the free space between the XP and Vista partition. No problem booting afterwards, I did several other operations (extend the partition, convert it to primary instead of logical…), without any problems, and the multiboot is still operational.
And for what it’s worth, when I change something in Vista about the Vista partition, Disk Director will reboot and apply the changes on boot, before loading the OS, like any self-respecting partitioning software should… Paragon Partition Manager on the other hand, gave me nothing but trouble, and even though it’s uninstalled, I now get a DOS prompt-like notification at boot about some of its files missing. Avoid this software…
Fred
April 19th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Another idea, Make sure to turn off the Recycle Bin on the partitions you want to resize. Windows will reserve up to 10% of drive space for it.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
How to resize a partition in Windows Vista…
Programs such as Partition Magic don’t work on Windows Vista. Some of you may be wondering how to resize partitions without losing any data. The good news is that you probably won’t be needing those programs because Windows Vista can manage your pa…
April 27th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Hi..i have 120GB HDD with vista installed on 100GB C DRIVE …I wanna resize 100 GB C drive into 60+40 sotht i can go with XP also…Above operation works well till making unallocated disk space..bt creates problem while manking New Partition of unallocated 40 GB partition..and gives an error msg that “You do not have sufficient disk space to perform this operation.”…Does anyone of ou has solution for it?..i tried a lot bt i coulldnt find result…
April 28th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
It could be because System Restore is using that space.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
hmm…what should be by next step to solve it..and to get my drive resized….
April 28th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Rushil: Just a word of warning before I begin typing away, many people have had frustration with resizing partitions. I can’t guarantee you will successfully resize your partition but anyway…
First, if you don’t use System Restore, you can disable it by checking out this post: http://vistarewired.com/2007/04/28/working-with-system-restore-in-windows-vista/
If you do use it, you could resize it. It would be wise not to resize it too much. System Restore uses 15% of your Hard Drive for its backups. You can run this command:
vssadmin resize shadowstorage /on=c: /for=c: /maxsize=4GB
Change c: to the appropriate drive and 4GB to the appropriate size. Do not make it lower than 1GB.
Next you can try the various partition posts on VistaRewired. You can start with the one under Most Popular in the sidebar on the left. If that doesn’t work, and you are in a hurry, I suggest you try Gparted:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
If you have the time, make sure to read the update post on partitions I made before going to Gpart.
For me, the 1st method (Using the GUI Disk Management Tool) could only shrink by a couple of Gigabytes. Doing it via command prompt did the job. For others, only Gpart would work. Through tackling this problem, I still don’t know what works best for all =( Hope it works well for you.
April 29th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
I think Win vista is restricted to partition to only half af the hardrive.
i have 160gb in my laptop, it only allowd me to partition to about 70gb, there is no work arround within vista (not yet found)
I goind to try the Gparted method.
April 29th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
I did it with the gparted, very easy to use.
I shrink vista in a 40gb patition and @ the restart vista did a system check.
that set.
When I went back to comp. management it even allowd me to shrink C:\ to half again.
thankYou for the tip and tricks
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Rousseau: Can u plz tell me steps ? i mean how did u do this?….thnx..
May 5th, 2007 at 2:32 am
Anyone know how to convert a logical partition/drive to a primary partition on Windows Vistta Business?
I need to have it as a primary partition so I can put Linux on there.
Thanks for your help.
May 6th, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Okay i just got a new computer to game w/ but alot of things arent compatible w/ windows vista premium. I want to put windows xp home edition. I already have the disk. Now what do i do? Can you guide me step by step on how to do that?
May 7th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Roger:
I will have to look into that for you. I accidentally erased my entire Vista partition installing Ubuntu and am way too busy Windows Vista right now… I don’t even know where the disc is. Anyway, I searched for a few links that may be helpful:
http://neosmart.net/blog/2006/easybcd-15-multidual-boot-vista-linux-mac-os-x-bsd/
http://apcmag.com/5046/how_to_dual_boot_vista_with_linux_vista_installed_first
No guarantees if they work since I don’t use linux. Hope this helps a bit.
Chris:
Windows Vista can put programs into compatibility mode, check out this article: http://vistarewired.com/2007/02/18/run-your-non-vista-software-on-vista/
May 8th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Great article and forum.
Stupid question:
VISTA [120GB HD C: 52GB D: 52GB]
-If I,let’s say extend my C drive, does it automatically shrink my D drive?
-Also I’m not clear about the best use for my [DATA] D drive.
May 11th, 2007 at 11:05 am
i have bought this laptop just yesterday
HP Pavilion dv6226tx Notebook PC
it has windows vista premium installed
i wanna make 4 partitions
how to do this?
without any software or if need any software then which one
and how
plz guide me
May 14th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
To the people above: the reason why you can’t usually resize past 50% is because windows usually scatters files all over the disk, and the windows partition editor doesn’t know how to ‘defragment’ these files. Compare this with PartitionMagic, which has no problems taking files that obstruct the process and cramming them into whatever free space it finds. So you need one of these tools that can defragment/compact the disk.
If you doubt this, just download Sysinternals DiskView and take a look just how ‘compacted’ your disk really is.
May 14th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
i have a 160 hdd and on it, i have 3 partition. one of 12 GB and 2 of 68 GB……pls help me because i don’t know how to partition the 12 GB partition to be bigger in win vista …… so i use the manage program from the windows …. I’ve done the shrink task to a bigger partition but i cant extend the 12 gb because the 12 gb partition is primary partition and the other 2 is logical and i dont know how to use that unpartitionated space………pls if you find a program that works under vista pls tell…..or another method that i could use…… I think that 1 solution of tis problem is to go with my hdd to a frien and use his Partition Magic to partition mine hdd …………so pls help ………….. :D:D:))))))):D:D:D:P:P…………………..10x
May 23rd, 2007 at 1:04 am
Can i make three partitions using Windows vista, And can i install Windows XP on the thrid partition ? If possible can any one help me ?
May 31st, 2007 at 8:48 pm
thank you very much.
a website that is helpfull
June 1st, 2007 at 2:05 pm
I just want to know if you can play diablo I and II, Doom, Doom II, Final Doom ,Freedom Fighters and Clive Barker’s Undying on Windows Vista without losing data
June 7th, 2007 at 12:18 am
Disable virtual memory in the drive you want to reduce (shirnk)
June 8th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Dealing with partitions in Vista is easy with Paragon Partition Manager 8 Recovery Disk. Boot to it and you can do just about anything. My copy came free with Personal Computer World magazine. I have found invaluable information on vistarewired and hope my contribution is of some help to all you frustrated Vista users out there!
June 20th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Week old toshiba satellite with 150GB; comp.manage won’t go below 98GB in C; tried a few solutions proposed in the above posts without effect. Objective is one Fat32 data partition, and two(at least) others for linuxOs. Tried my old Partition Commander8 and evaporated the MBR; not good… How about initial partition changes with Knoppix? Will gparted on Knoppix allow me to further shrink C, then establish a Fat32 partition for data, without evaporating the MBR so that Vista will still open?
June 23rd, 2007 at 10:31 pm
There is a problem shrinking C drive in Vista. From within Vista, you cannot shrink C drive beyond about 1/2 the size of the hard disk. The reason appears to be System Restore. Deactivate System Restore and remove all restore points. Defragment the drive. Download GParted from the link below, burn the iso file to a CD, and you should have no problem shrinking the drive to any desired size. You can create, delete, format, and resize partitions.
June 24th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I have had a weird experience…I have extended an NTFS partition 2 GB. Disk Managment says it has been extended, but Windows Explorer refuses to acknowledge the extension…i booted into XP and it too is not recognizing it…it seems I have a parital operation, like the partition table says it is 2GB bigger than the NTFS file system assoc. with the drive. I had just converted it from FAT32 for the sole reason of being able tom resize the partition. Hmmm…I guess I may be in for a total repartition? Hmmm
June 26th, 2007 at 5:53 pm
For those who have the “lotsa space but little shrink room” problem, this should help:
It really is that certain data is placed at the end of the disk or partition, and you can move it with the “Offline” files defrag available in the free trial of http://www.raxco.com/products/downloadit/perfectdisk_download.cfm . I think there are supposedly limitations in the trial program, but what you need works.
If you want to make smaller partitions out of the new ones you make, you have to do defrag “offline” files on each new partition before you’ll be able to shrink it. You’ll be able to see Perfect Disk move the data. I think in another defragger the data that kept getting in the way was IDed as metadata .
So many experts say that defrag isn’t necessary under normal circumstances, but I do like my data tidy. I’m tempted to buy Perfect Disk just because it allowed me to partition my disk using the Vista tool. Plus, I like to see the process, not do it blind as in Vista’s defragger.
I tried for 2 hellish days to solve this problem without buying something or figuring out how to install & use GPart. Someone suggested this, but without detail, and I didn’t understand that I could use Perfect Disk in a trial version that would work. I’m going to offer this solution in the appropriate threads in the sites I visited when looking for help. Please do the same if you have time.
Hope this helps!
KLHT
June 29th, 2007 at 8:39 am
ello,
Any good suggestion please to be able to resize it ?
I have recently bought dell xps 1210 with pre installed windows vista business installed in drive c 140 gb and drive d only 10 gb.
I want to resize my drive c in order to have either drive d bigger or to have another drive, but it doesn’t work out.
i tried to resize drive c, it could be done but when i right click on new volum to have it located at the end wizard/messages tells me you don’t have enough memory
June 29th, 2007 at 9:31 am
disk data recovery…
Hi. Thanks for the good read….
July 3rd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Can i do the same thing with XP windows if im using a MAC ?
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Thanks for the great tip! I had no idea this was in Vista - This saves me from the frustration of using partation magic
July 10th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
KLHT!!!
yes! Thanks a million for that PerfectDisk tip — didn’t have to burn a GPart disk or anything - sweet! FINALLY able to shrink my 80G disk more than 6 Gig! What a relief! thanks!
July 16th, 2007 at 11:22 am
Thanks for the wicked tip…was looking to use partition magic and found this was not available - and so this has saved me carrying out a FULL rebuild.
July 20th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Need help, please!
I have shrinked the C: where Vista is installed from about 55GB to 35GB but I can’t find that left 20GB?!!? I mean there is one part but it has no E: or F: latter for disk. I want to install WinXP on it but how if there is no extra disk partitioned?
Thanks a lot!!! Cheers!
July 20th, 2007 at 11:17 am
The tutorial was very helpful, and I figured out how to reformat and create a separate disk like E: or F: etc.
One more question, I have shrinked the Vista hard disk part making it small (about 35 GB) and I want it to make beyond 40 GB which is a minimum requirement for Vista.
Please, could you help me how to enlarge its volume! How can I merge back or enlarge the Vista installed part?
Thank you very much!!!
July 21st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Jack…
I came to this blog through google and found this very useful post. Thank you….
July 24th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
works great
August 10th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
worked for me excellent tutorial
August 11th, 2007 at 5:00 pm
how do i create a new partition??
August 16th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
1. I couldn’t shrink a drive with 30GB below 90GB with the Vista disk manager. I turned off ‘virtual memory’, I blew away the ‘hibernate’ file and the ‘Windows Restore data’ and turned off the ‘Recycle Bin’, rebooted and then defrgmented it. Everything. No use. All I wanted was a more manageable 60GB size for backup/recovery, and another big partition to boot Linux and do other things.
2. The amount I shrunk it… WAS LOST. 60GB down the tubes. It can’t be formatted (After going through the ‘Wizard’, and leaving everyt setting to the default, I get “The attempted operation is invalid…”). It has ‘delete partition’ available on the popup, and when I click that, it says “There is not enough space available on the disk(s) to complete the operation.” No space to make space from free space. Super. The Vista partition wouldn’t reclaim it, either. The drive space is LOST.
3. PartitionMagic 8.0 won’t run under Vista AND the bootable CD doesn’t BOOT. It puts up an ‘error’ for BOTH physical hard drives and won’t do anything. That’s right, the SECOND physical hard disk WITHOUT Vista on it couldn’t be operated on by PartitionMagic, either.
4. I will have to use a more primitive ‘FDISK’ to completely blow away the partition table, and that means it’ll blow away Dell’s retarded, useless ‘Recovery’ garbage (no big loss) and restore the boot partition from a drive image backup (Ghost 12 hopefully will work). It also means I’ll have to do it to the second hard drive to scrub the Vista CRAP off of it, at least if I want to repartition THAT drive.
Of course, I can’t do any of THIS until Dell ships me a bootable Vista install disk so I have somewhere to go if Ghost doesn’t work, because Dell’s ‘recovery’ software… well, the instructions begin with ‘Click on the Start Button’. Guess what happens if Vista doesn’t boot all the way to the desktop? The thing that you needed to fix it WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE. Good planning, DELL!
So, in short, this Vista ‘feature’ is not only crippled, but DANGEROUS to use, just as we’ve come to expect from Microsoft. Once it screws up, it’s irreversible for most users, short of using some form of ‘recovery’ software that blows EVERYTHING away and ‘begins fresh’. So for most users, that’ll be starting over from scratch, re-installing all the software, tracking down all the licenses, etc.
August 18th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I’m brand new to partitioning with Vista. I followed the guide above and created a new Unallocated drive of 29.30 GB. What’s the next step?? I read somewhere where I’m supposed to click “New Simple Volume” to format the drive but I follow the steps in the Wizard and it tells me “not enough space available”. Does anyone know how to get around this????
August 29th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Any HELP out there would be appreciated..
An idiot that worked here (’ed’ is operative tense) created a C parition of 10g and installed Vista…..since it it SLAP FULL with nothing else to delete, how can i expand this partition to gobble up some of the rest of the 80g drive available?
attempting to shring the c drive results in insufficient disk space message
Reducing the D partition in size doesn’t seem to help either..
Many thanks in advance
David
September 1st, 2007 at 5:04 pm
To all who are attempting VISTA-WINXP dual-boot and when trying to create a new simple volume receive the error message: “There is not enough space available on the disk(s) to complete this operation”—
Check the number of existing partitions on your physical drive- you CANNOT have more than 4 total.
In most cases, this error is thrown because you have 4 parititions already from an OEM install. Deleting the partitions created by the OEM is often not possible due to the way the OEMs configure them.
MS is said to correct this in SP1…but “MS finally opened up Wednesday (8/29/07) and said it will release the first Service Pack for Windows Vista in the first quarter of 2008 with a wider beta version coming in “a few weeks.”
September 5th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Hi guys,
I have recently bought new laptop with Windows vista home premium. There are 120 GB harddisk.
Already i removed recovery partition once i backup cd.
Now there are 110 GB i would like to repartion of my hardisk like c:drive 40gb, d:drive40gb rest e:drive.
Any one can help me.
Hopefully waiting for your favourable solution soon.
Advance thanks.
With regards
shiva
September 10th, 2007 at 10:58 am
I am trying to add new partitions in vista. I am able to shrink C to get the desired space, but when I try to create a new simple partition, it says ‘not enough space available’. I have 99GB on C which I shrunk by 20GB to create the new partition. i tried both disk management and diskpart. both do not work. Can anyone please help?T
September 16th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
omfg thx make some more of this nice shit
September 18th, 2007 at 1:03 am
i have a 160 hdd and on it, i have 8gb for hp recovery and remaining is C drive.I made partitions on C drive .Partitions happened like this 74gb for c ,20 gb for F ,47gb for A ,remaining 11 gb is unallaocated space .I could not see it.If we delete any volume ,can’t we access it?.Now I want to increase size of F drive by using this unallocated space.Kindly tell me the way to do this .
September 18th, 2007 at 1:06 am
can’t we acess a deleted disk ?.Kindly help me to recover the unallocated space.
September 24th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
I don’t want to dual boot, I just want the OS on one partition and data on the other partition.
Vista won’t install if it sees two primary partitions.
What if I use FDISK (W98 bootdisk) to create one primary partition and one extended partition, and then install Vista on the lone primary partition.
Create a logical drive inside the Extended partition using Disk Management in Vista.
October 7th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
i made another partition in windows vista, and when i put the windows xp cd in at start up this screen came up with the partitions. the partition i made in windows vista was there. i selected it and it asked me to formatt it, so i did. after windows xp installed and i took the windows xp cd out of my laptop, restarted the laptop and went straight into windows xp! In amazement i was like “what happened to windows vista?” on my dads pc he put windows xp home and windows xp pro on two different partitions and when he starts up his pc there is this screen where you can pick which operating system you want to boot with. in my case this did not happen at all. Anyone with answers would be very much appreciated.
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:34 am
> Be sure to back up any valuable information, because there is a slight chance that data can be lost when dealing with partitions.
Are you serious?
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:43 pm
This is amazing, it worked great! Good for you, microsoft!
October 25th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
I made a shrink volume from c:\ and it makes f:\,without problem.But then when I put a bootable cd to install windows XP on f:\,it just can’t see it.Its says that its only c:\ and in unknown format(it’s NTFS) and about 130 GB.But my disk is 160 GB.Then I decide to format disk and put only XP,but it won’t start and says:read disk error please press ctrl+alt+delete to restart.Like there is no HDD in my computer.Finally i need to recovery with rescue disks,and I’m back in Vista. Please someone to tell me how can resize partition and install XP in other partition,without to erase Vista.Thanks.
October 25th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Daniel, Windows vista doesn’t show up once you have installed ‘earlier version of windows’ (i.e. XP). What i can understand from your query is that you would like to have two OS (Vista and XP) installed with dual boot option, m i getting you right?For that you should have followed the sequence -> earlier versions first (i.e. XP) and then Vista. You will get the option to boot either in XP or Vista then.
October 25th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Hi all, nice thread … special thanks to Albert for providing useful information, but i cannot see his comments more recently.
Well, i have a query exactly similar to Dan’s posted on Mar 3rd, 2007..I have Dell Notebook (Vostro) with 120GB HD, C is the drive in which OS (vista basic) is installed and another drive for recovery. I want to break C into two drives, tried so called “Shrink” facility provided by MS, doesn’t work. I had C drive almost full till sometime back but now i have emptied it, around 40 GB free space. Still, it doesn’t allow me to shrink, shows 0 available space for shrinking. I just want to know what is the safest method to resolve my issue, can i trust Gpart? Is it available for free? Or Perfect disk trial version is a better option? Don’t want to loose installed OS on C.
Pls help!
October 25th, 2007 at 10:07 pm
Very good!! smart and clear!
October 30th, 2007 at 1:54 am
Im very impressed
vista is great so far
October 30th, 2007 at 7:15 am
Hello can any one help me solve this issue
Ive resized the partition in Vista Ultimate So now there is 1st partition C:\ Drive which has the Vista operating system installed on and there is a 2nd partition E:\ which has nothing install on it and just newly created is the 3rd partition F:\ Drive
The computer also has a floppy installed A:\ and a DVD drive D:\
The problem is that now once the 3rd partition was created after a reboot of the computer Windows Vista will not start up, its like it cannot find C:\ as the primary partition
I beleive it could be thinking the F:\ drive created is now the master and windows is trying to start from this drive instead of C:\ where windows is installed..
Can anyone help me out I dont want to reinstall windows over again if possible
October 31st, 2007 at 4:11 am
Just to let everyone know, this whole “Vista only lets your shrink your partition by half” issue might not really be an issue, just more of an inconvenience. Here is my initial setup: 150Gb Harddrive… C: = 141Gb, D: = 8Gb (stupid recovery partition).
I wanted to resize my C: drive to be only 40Gb and use the rest as my D: drive. When I used Vista Disk Management (DM) to shrink the drive, I got the issue everyone is having…I could only shrink it by about half, down to 77Gb. I did some of the tricks on here to see if I could get it to shrink by more. I downloaded PerfectDisk and did an entire defrag and also an offline defrag (after running chkdsk). This didn’t make a difference. I then disabled system restore and file paging. Again, no difference. I didn’t want to try GParted since I’ve read about rebooting issues and I don’t have a Vista CD to recover from. I decided to go ahead and use Vista’s DM to at least shrink by half. After shrinking, it rebooted, the rebooted again. I now had C: = 77Gb, D: = 8Gb, unallocated = 64Gb.
I used DM to delete my D: drive to combine it with the new unallocated space, then reformatted the unallocated space as my D: drive again so I now had C: = 77Gb and D: = 72Gb. I restarted again.
Out of curiousity, I went into DM again and chose to shrink my C: drive and voila…I get to shrink by half again. I could now adjust the shrink size to get my 40Gb C: drive and repeated the above procedure to recreate my D: drive as 110Gb now.
I’ve spent a couple days reading these forums to determine my options and the risks of each when all I had to do the whole time was go through the Vista “shrink by half” procedure a couple of times. I’m curious as to whether I even needed to disable file paging and system restore. I think running PerfectDisk was probably a good idea. Anyone willing to give it a go without doing anything special and see if it works for them? Vista actually worked out pretty good for me in doing a basic partitioning job.
Brian
November 4th, 2007 at 6:07 am
Try to Create New simple Volume …. but got “not enough space available” …. I have enough space … do you know how to solve it ? Am I having too many partitions ?
November 4th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Good Idea…
November 6th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
I just reimaged my notebook with windows xp (its a toshiba) and i decided to dual boot with vista on a seperate partition. the problem i have now is that i manually deleted windows xp from my computer and i want to merge the two partitions. disk manager wont let me because its listed as a ‘boot’ and ’system’ partition. any suggestions as to how i might be able to go about formatting that partition - i’ve tried pretty much everything i could find including diskpart.exe and to no avail. thanks in advance!
November 8th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
At times like these, makes so glad I never downgraded to Vista ….good Lord!
November 14th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
So I have a few questions not answered here that im going to ask (and maybe answer some other people’s too). To start I have a laptop with a RAID 0 in it. Both drives are 80 GB. I have vista Premium installed on a 140+ (there seems to be a utility partition i dont want to touch because it came with the computer). I want to install the new Fedora Core 8 and XP alongside my Vista install. I will primarily use Vista so it can take about 120 Gigs of my room. I mainly want Fedora because I like to play with linux programs every once in a while. I also like to play games, many of which only seem to work in XP (and before anyone tries it no they certainly do NOT work in compatibility mode, my entire computer will go FUBAR and have to be formatted and Vista re-installed). I want to use about 15 (or a bit more if I could get it) for XP. When trying to resize in Vista it seems as if I can only get about 9 GB to be freed. Anyone have ideas on how to make the newly freed area to be larger? Also once I get Linux Vista and XP installed which boot loader should I use? I was assuming to use GRUB as it has worked flawlessly for me on duel boot systems before I just do not know if there is anything else better out there (hopefully not the Vista one, too many Vista problems already. Ugh)
November 16th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Brilliant tip! Thanks. Worked as described.
November 17th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
I’ve shrunk my D: drive but this created unallocated space. How do I assign this space to my C: drive?
November 21st, 2007 at 11:14 am
This worked great! Got a new Acer with two 30G partitions, C and D. Used this tutorial to delete D and expand C to the full disk size. No problems.
Many thanks.
November 23rd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Hii..well I just bought my laptop a toshiba satellite one built in win VIsta Home Edition.i just wanted to put XP in a prtition so that I can used my softwares that do not worked on vista for my studies..
Thank you guyz..the shrink method really works..
Caimps
November 27th, 2007 at 3:17 am
I used the gparted live cd 0.3.4-10 and it worked. Follow the step http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/livecd/livecd.htm
November 28th, 2007 at 9:23 am
hello
i did the partation in vista, i create another disk using C dick space but now i want to give back some size again to C drive … how i can do it ? any body can help me in this regard
i wil be thankful to him/her
illyas, dubai, UAE
November 28th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
PerfectDisk did the job of getting my C drive partitioned below 80GB. Just did an offline scan followed by an entire system scan.
November 28th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
Very Nice it worked just fine
just 1 suggestation to include last step to make shrank space in to actual partation
but very help full thanks very very much
November 29th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
That was great. Thank you very much. You saved my time. god Bless You
December 2nd, 2007 at 4:54 pm
actualy there is a way to get the C drive bigger and to chose the exact size you wish for the d:
what i did is i simply deleted completly the D: partition on the computer manager
after that created a new d: with the sise i wanted then extended my C:
it worked for me.
December 2nd, 2007 at 8:45 pm
FYI, I just got this to work within vista. The problem seems to have been related to my partition types. I had C/D/E listed as primary, extended, and logical partitions, respectively. The logical partition was not a “real” partition apparently, basically both D and E were linked together (they had a green box surrounding both in the disk manager). Consequently, deleting the D partition left me with “Free Space” in the disk manager. After I deleted the E volume and then the actual partition, the space was listed as “Unallocated”. I could now extend the primary/C partition into that space.
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:44 am
I’ve deleted one of my partition accidentally…
can anybody tell me how to restore it…
tHaNks…
regaRds..
December 8th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
thank you
December 9th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Why wo’t this tool let me shrink my C: drive to less than 100 GB?? I’m only using 24 GB of it…. Does anyone know??
December 12th, 2007 at 7:57 am
informative & useful. thanks =)
December 15th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Initially, following these instructions I was facing greyed options for Extending C:
This seemed to have been due to other partitions taking up the entire hard disk space.
I decided to get rid of some of them (as I did not need these partitions anymore, originally
I was planning to use them for other operating systems but then never did, so I could afford to free them).
So, once I started deleting other volumes, the Disk Management in Vista labelled them as
Free (and showed this space in green color).
At this point the option to extend C: was still greyed. I tried to completely delete this
Free (in green color) partition, but got an error message.
I then went to the Windows Vista Explorer, right clicked C: for Properties, then Tools and
did a Defragmentation (this took some time).
After this it was possible to completely Delete the Free (green color) partition, and so it turned
from green into black with the label Unallocated in the Vista Disk Management.
At the same point I guess the Extend option for C: turned from greyed to black (active) and
using the Extend option in Disk Management SUDDENLY WORKED WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS.
In other words, I suspect the Defragmentation did the trick by allowing for complete deletion
and hence free and unallocated space.
Maybe it is also useful to know that in Disk Management my C: carries the Status attributes in brackets
Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition).
December 18th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Hi. I’m really new with this so this might be a stupid question. My c-drive is full, but I have about 10 gig free on my other partition. If i shrink the other partition, can I then extend the C-drive or am I supposed to do something else.
thanks.
December 21st, 2007 at 5:01 am
helpful . useful . thankful.
December 21st, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Use GParted!!!! Makes this sooooo easy. I tried my partition Magic to no avail so then went with GParted. First I shrunk the drive in Vista but then it wouldn’t allow a me to create a new parttion in the free space. Used GParted to create the new partition and and 2 others with no problems. I have a brand new hp laptop 160GB SATA drive, 2GB memory pentium T7500 2.2GHz, blah blah blah. Now I have 4 roughly 40GB partitions that eventually will be Vista Home Premium, Vista Business,XP PRO, and iTUNES storage.
December 26th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Hi, I have delete my partion c & d using vista setup. but by using managment tools in vista i cant creat the second one. C drive modified but D is still unpartiond.
Plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz help me.
December 31st, 2007 at 9:51 am
Hi there,
I used gparted live cd 0.3.4-10 and it worked. Follow the step http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/livecd/livecd.htm
Works pretty much like Partition Magic, but, well, this one work with Vista as well
January 1st, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Hi everyone:
I had 140GB capacity on drive c: and I shrunk it.But it just let me shrink 50GB and kept 90GB on c:.Why is that?Can I change the capacities some how?
January 1st, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I read what Brian had said.But I cannot shrink by half!
January 1st, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Hi, in answering the most topical issue here and in response to part of nahallacman question, that is the limited amount a partition may be shrinked using Windows Disk Management Utility. I think it has to do with how the disk as a whole is organised; some disks such as mine may have for example a 120 GB HDD with three partitions :3GB, 10GB and 99GB, but the 99GB partitions cannot be shrunk to a capacity lower than a certain value nor extended to the full capacity and this is because of the order of partitions on the disk, where the master boot record or boot sector is located and in the case of Vista, the boot loader. Vista’s boot loader as was mentionedvis very picky with partitions and sometimes certain rearrangements may cause the boot loader to give problems. Well so far I just repeated what was mentioned already, and to address this issue I used a program called Paragon Patition Manager 8.5 which is very useful and reliable in partiition management;but be wary and do not reorder the parttiions as this may cause boot errors; if boot errors are found, you can simply ‘quick-format’ the disk, install Easeus Data Recovery Wizard 4.0 which regains all files lsot even after format and partiion damage.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Another completely worthless, unusable program from Microsoft. I can’t make a partition smaller than 75 Gigabytes? Well why the hell not?
Back to the real program from the real company.
How do they fail every single time? Microsoft can’t make a firewall, a defragmenter, a file manager, and now, not even a basic partitioner. Ranish, built in ‘91 still works to this day.
You’re worthless, Gates.
January 12th, 2008 at 8:24 am
i cant use any bootup programs as i am using hardware raid 0 and i would need to load drivers. so Gparted does not work. i have these unmoveable files at the end of my disk which stop me from partitioning. i have removed hiberfile and pagefile so i dont knnow that these are? pls help
January 12th, 2008 at 11:12 am
vista home basic how will paratation….. so OS will not re install…. this is possible
January 14th, 2008 at 8:41 am
I tried to shrink a 465GB hard drive to create a new 30GB partition. Vista only allowed me to shrink by 100MB! After trying Auslogics, O&O Defrag and PerfectDisk I found that PerfectDisk is the tool to use!
First I did an offline defrag of the system files, followed by an “aggressive free space consolidation” defrag of the whole drive. After that I had a load of free space left at the end of the drive and Vista finally let me shrink it to 30GB
January 15th, 2008 at 11:06 am
It works for me! Thanks for sharing! Did not even have to reboot after changing my partition!
January 19th, 2008 at 8:59 am
This feature is also found in windows xp , you can reach it through control panel~performance and maintainance~administrative tools~computer mangement~storage~disk management………..it is the same.
January 21st, 2008 at 6:06 am
This is a very good documentation and it worked for me and will benefit many others like me those who are happy with a single partition. Thank you.
January 22nd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Great info exchange! Vista partition manager may not be the cat’s PJs but it saved me when I imaged an XP machine to my Seagate 500G drive and the single partition shrank to 50Gs. Partition Magic could have done it but it’s too spendy. Vista fixed my problems! Thanks everyone!!
January 30th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
Brian,
(post of October 31st, 2007 at 4:11 am) it worked for me, without deleting the D: partition!
Thanks a mil,
Davide
January 31st, 2008 at 11:49 am
jack Says:
December 18th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Hi. I’m really new with this so this might be a stupid question. My c-drive is full, but I have about 10 gig free on my other partition. If i shrink the other partition, can I then extend the C-drive or am I supposed to do something else.
thanks.
I have the same question with this guy, and I still cant find the answer yet. Is anyone willing to help?
February 4th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I have an external 250 GB hd with partitions F + G. I want them to join into one single partition. I followed the instructions above, I was able to delete volume F - but the G volume didn’t extend over the whole disk as expected, a “non-allocated partition” appeared. Your advice how to do correctly is very much appreciated!
February 5th, 2008 at 2:00 am
thanks, i work like a pro IT
February 5th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Wow! so fast and easy. thanks for sharing this feature.
February 6th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Total 250 GB, i was shrinking C:, it allowed me to shrink 95 gb, When i create new volumne, it is saying no avaiable space. what do i need to do?
February 7th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I already knew about this…
BUT
I would like to know how to dual boot with (linux) Ubuntu/Ubuntu Studio
Do I just create a partition for Ubuntu? How big?
February 8th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
I used http://hevnikov.com/blog/2006/11/13/triple-boot-xp-vista-ubuntu-with-single-boot-screen/
But… I think you’re better off looking on http://www.lifehacker.com for such a guide.
Sorry, I’ve done this before but have little experience.
February 9th, 2008 at 12:07 am
IT DOESN’T WORK RESIZING LOGIC PARTITION…… F**K
February 9th, 2008 at 10:59 am
hey there … i tried making partions 160 gb HDD with vista. I am able to make it but now c is 74gb and d is the rest. I want to shrink c to 40 gb. I tried the perfectdisk offline diskfragmenting and also disabling the paging file but its of no use. c is still 74gb. pls some one guide me what to do. as i want c to be 40. pls help.
February 9th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
okay so im rele new to this and my question is, the other night i was going to dual boot the mac OS X on my comp. and i had to make 6 GB of Unallocated space so i tried to use partition magic.. a bunch of errors came up and now i cant access my second partition whoch was my D: drive with my movies,music, etc. so i was wondering how can i get access to that partition again ? (ive also tried using the recorver cds and that didnt work:( would only let me restore first partition) any help ???
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:25 am
thanks
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:24 am
I am a little confused about the different types of drives (logical, primary, etc)
I just simply want to partition my 160 gig HD into 4 partitions to store different data on them eg Documents, Music, Pictures & Downloads.
And just in case my “C” drive needs to get refomatted, all my stored data would reamain intact.
So what what would I Partition it as -logical, primary or what?
Thank you
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 am
Sorry just a comment on my request - just above. My operating system is Vista and I am planning to use Paragon Partition Manager. This is where at the beginning of the procedure there is a square “Create as Logical Disk” that has no check mark in it. Should it have a check mark in it?
Thank you
March 3rd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
I need some help with an existing partition. i just began trying out ubuntu linux as a second operating system. i am currently running vista home premium as my main OS. however i made some errors creating the linux partition..
i have a 320gb hard drive and i wanted 30gb for linux and the rest for vista. instead i made 30gb for vista and the rest for linux.. anyway of fixing this? any help would be nice..
jordan
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:17 pm
Jordan: I would recommend you to use GParted. It is recommended to use an independent version of Gparted rather than the one included on the Ubuntu disk since that one will automatically mount your drives, and will be a big hassle.
March 3rd, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Mishka: I’m not sure what you mean by checkmark.
Primary: This partition should include your operating system and is typically the C Drive. It would be a good idea to have the C Drive to be primary partition and let it stay that way.
Logical: Everything else. Your stored data will be intact. To make new partitions, this is what I recommend. You cannot create a logical partition since they can only be created inside an extended partition. This is kind of confusing so let me map it out for you again:
Primary Partition - Do not touch. Only for your main operating system. (I won’t go into installing other OSes.)
Extended - Create one of these
Logical - Create these. These go inside the extended.
Good luck and always backup just in case.
March 9th, 2008 at 12:08 am
I am currently using LG Laptop trying to partition it. The local hardisk drive only allow mi to shrink to the minimum of 80GD. Below the box it says “Size of available shrink space can be restricted if snapshot and pagefiles are enable”. Does anyone know why is it so? And how i can shrink my local hard drive to small size like 45GD?
March 9th, 2008 at 12:10 am
It depends on how much free space there is. The reason why you may not be able to shrink it to the desired space could be because:
- Pagefile
- System Files such as System Restore and temporary files
Looks like I’m going to have to make another thread on this partition issue.
March 13th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Guys it looks like this partition article is getting really popular. I’m in the midst of making an “ultimate” partition thread to answer everybody’s problems. If you have any other questions or issues, please send them here:
http://vistarewired.com/submit-a-tip
It would be useful for you to also post a picture of your problem. To do so, press print screen on your keyboard and your computer will make a copy of your screen. Then open paint, paste it, save the file. Go to this website: http://imageshack.us
Upload the picture there. After uploading, scroll to the very bottom and give me the direct link.
Thanks.
March 16th, 2008 at 8:46 am
I have a simple Question:
Will all data on the harddisk be safe when creating a new partition like in partition magic?
March 16th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
You are never 100 percent sure. Backing up is recommended
March 20th, 2008 at 3:46 am
Why is it that my hard drive is only half full but i cant shrink the volume. It says that the available shrinking size is 0 mb?
had 140GB capacity on drive c: and I shrunk it.But it just let me shrink 50GB and kept 90GB on c:.Why is that?Can I change the capacities some how?
March 20th, 2008 at 7:48 am
i just a have one partition on my laptop and windows vista is installed in it.Can i partition that drive ?
March 23rd, 2008 at 9:02 am
Worked, i have my D(RECOVER) drive back but my C(boot) is 30 gigabyte smaller :s :s :s. Help please
March 23rd, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Hi. I bought a new VAIO Laptop with VISTA pre-installed. It has 250 GB hard disk with partitions - 8 GB Vista (EISA configuration) and 224 GB for C drive, I want to partition my C drive. I did every possible way posted in the website http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/working-around-windows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems/
. Finally after 3 days of hard work I could shrink by 105 GB with the remaining 120 GB with C. I still want to shrink my C drive to 50 GB, So that I can have 2 partitions with 80 GB each and the rest for Linux. The disk manager shows that I can furthur shrink by 60 GB but when I do it , it gives me an error saying that ‘there is no enough space available on this disk(s) to do perform this operation”. Please help me on this. I am almost vexed by this, I attached the 2 image file related to this.
The links are
http://img229.imageshack.us/content.php?page=done&l=img229/9594/image1va7.jpg
http://img247.imageshack.us/content.php?page=done&l=img247/2330/image2di4.jpg
FYI: I deframented number of times using Perfect Disk 8.0 and Perfect Disk 2008 Trial Version. Used Pentagon software too. Perfect Disk I think helped me in shrinking by 105 GB. It was good. Also I disabled my paging, system restore, Kernal debugging. Did chkdisk a few number of times.
Please help me on this as soon as possible. Thanks in advance.
March 24th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
I think I’ve got a problem w/ my brand new laptop similar to the one from the previous poster. I shrank my C:(SYSTEM) drive 160GB and created one for my APPS partition. Then I shrunk my C: a bit more and created a partition for some random downloads, something I always called BUFFERS. Now, here’s the clincher. My APPS partition has 48GB of practically free space, hardly anything there yet. I wanted to shrink it and make a 20GB partition for my DOCS. In the process, it says that there is enough space for it. I end up w/ 20GB of unallocated space, but when I try to create a volume, I get the error saying “there is not enough space available on this disk(s) to perform this operation.” I can extend my APPS partition and take back this unallocated space. As many times I tried to create a vplume for that space, I end up w/ the same error. Please help!!!
March 25th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
Really weird? Did you get SP1 yet?
Also, if you are creating additional partitions I would recommend you create an extended, and then create logical partitions there. It seems that you haven’t done that?
March 25th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Raghavendran: I sent you an email
March 26th, 2008 at 11:49 pm
thank you
March 27th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
This is what makes me worried. The first disk space, APPS, that I “carved out” from the C: drive is now identified as “Healthy Primary partition”. The second space carved out of C:, which I called BUFFERS, is identified as “Healthy, Logical drive”. It’s when I attempt to shrink 48GB of APPS by 20GB that I get that unallocated space in which, when I try to create a volume, I get the “there is not enough space available on this disk(s) to perform this operation” error. How come APPS became a primary partition and BUFFERS a logical drive?
March 28th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Got another dumb question.
Being unsure about Vista with my new computer, and contemplating running a Linux OS on my computer I partitioned my 100 GB hardrive into 3 partitions. 1: 18 GB - Just for Vista OS, 2: 70 GB - for games, movies, music; and 3: 12 GB - for potential Linux OS later.
The problem I run into now, is that I wasn’t aware Vista is such a memory and data hog, that I’ve filled up partion 1. My friend has recommended that I just copy all of partion 2 on to an external hardrive, delete partition 2, then repartition to allow for ample room for vista and now sp1. Will this work? I’ve got photoshop and office and a bunch of other programs that I don’t have the cds for anymore (don’t ask) and I’m worried about losing my system. Help me.
March 29th, 2008 at 1:42 am
Hi,
Finally I had success with my Disk partitioning.
Guys, just use Partition Magic from Paragon Software and partition your disk as you like. Just Download the trial version
from http://www.paragon-software.com/business/pm-server/
It truly works like a magic. Defragmentation is not a complete solution for partitioning a disk. So if your main aim is partitioning a disk just use Partition Manager from Paragon software and finish your work in the least time possible.
My Laptop Configuration now is as below now
1. C Drive 40 GB
2 D Drive 85 GB
3 E Drive 90 GB
4. Linux (FC-8) 20 GB
I got what I needed. But do partition your hard drive very carefully. I lost my recovery partition this way (it was 8 GB). Anyways it was my mistake not Partition Manager’s.
Do all the changes in Partition Manger and press apply button. You can undo before pressing apply button. Partition manger for C drive works on reboot only. You can aggregate free space there so that you can create a bigger partition. When I was using Perfect Disk, it could not aggregate free space so I was unable to get the partition size I wanted though I can see that I am have enough free space. This is because your drives might have been scattered at different places on the disk. Defragmenters will only aggregate free space. They don’t move a partition from one place of the drive to another place. Partition magic did that and I was able to get the required partition size on the disk. My C drive shrank and is moved to a corner.
I am saying this after a week(7 X 14 hours) of tedious experimentation on my hard disk. I lost all hope. Then I thought to give a last try with Partition manager. It did everything for me in less than 2 hours. Only bad thing was I lost my Recovery partition because of some wrong selection. But my C drive is as good as before except with less size which is what I wanted. So try to use it very cautiously if there is some important data on your disk. I recommend taking a backup.
Also I would like to add few more words for those who use dual boot with Vista & Linux options. (Others with just dual/triple Microsoft Operating System options need not read this. I really pity these guys as why they want more then one Microsoft OS on their machines. I don’t like that
)
After installing Linux, everything works fine. When you go to Windows disk management don’t experiment, especially with /boot partition or other Linux partition where boot information is present. If you delete this partition your grub loader will fail to recognize any OS on your system. You cannot reinstall the grub alone because your grub is alive. So you need to reinstall the whole Linux OS by choosing the option to overwrite previous Linux partitions. This will not touch Windows partitions and is safe to use. I used Fedora Core 8 as my Linux OS.
I appreciate those who read until the end. I just want to share my views which can help you.
Thanks & Regards,
Raghavendra
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:00 am
I’m not getting,the shrink option is appearing but it cannot shrink actually
April 8th, 2008 at 6:09 am
I have sony vaio laptop and OS Vista Home Premium in only one partion i.e. C:. Can I make the partion into two part (C: and D:)? Will it affect my OS as it installed into C:.
April 12th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
You need to defrag your disk to make the maximum amount of space available for shrinking. If the disk usage is spread all over the disk neither command line nor disk management will allow you to shrink it.
After defrag the data will be as close as possible to the beginning of the disk and therefore you can shrink the partition.
You can use “shrink querymax” in diskpart to query the max space available for shrinking.
April 18th, 2008 at 11:53 am
I tried to delete D drive in Vista and expand C drive so as to have one big C drive. D became unallocated space and the option to expand C drive is grayed out. After trawling thru countless forums I found thosands in the same boat. Finally the Microsoft site no less told me to use 3rd party software. How humilating for Microsoft! I have Paragon Partition Manager on order as it says it can do this - Manage disk partitions Easily resize partitions to redistribute free space, expand or shrink the system partition, merge 2 partitions into a single partition. Convert to different file systems and more.
http://www.saversoftware.co.uk/details-6164.htm
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Hi, I haven’t got enough time to read all the messages so I’m just gonna ask. Is it possible to take space from extended partition to primary partition. See, the problem is. I’m running low space on C, which is primary partition and I have plenty of free space in D and E which are part of extended partition. But I can’t find a way to move that free space? Is there one, or should I use some othe program?
May 4th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Dear Guys
I have got a laptop(with Windows Vista Home Premium) and its’ hard drive has already partitioned to only two
partitions.
C: 74.5 GB (With OS)
D: 66.7 GB
But I want to partition it further(At least for 4 partitions)
And in c: 24.5GB amount is used, so that I want to protect those data(with the OS)
* I want to partion the C: drive to 40GB(with OS) and rest 34.5GB to another partion.
* whereas I want to equally divide the D: partion.(i.e 33GB each)
How can I do this? Please tell me a way to come up with this…
(If any suggestions to use any software please tell me a site to download the full ver:
of that software)
Besides I have a problem with my Hard Drive. Recently I installed NERO 8 to C: drive
and it showed, 1.02GB has allocated for the NERO, in ADD OR REMOVE PROGRAMMS Menu.
But When I uninstalled NERO another 5GB amount of space has vanished(except to that 1.02GB)
from my C: Drive (So the TOTAL amount vanished = 6 GB).Why is this happened?
If anyone has any ideas about this matter and how to recover my lost space,
please tell me as soon as possible.
Expecting for replies, soon.
Thanks.
Gayan.
May 6th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
hey,
i have a free space of 62 GB in drive C and i want to make a new partition of 60 GB size , but when i try to shrink C
it shows that the available shrink size is 27 GB
i don’t understand , plz someone tell me what to do
May 6th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
thanx…..
very helpfull …
May 8th, 2008 at 3:44 am
hi i have windows vista and i get only one drive and tat is c: but i want to partation it and i want to make three partion each of 40 gb is it posible without formating the system please help me to do so thank you
May 9th, 2008 at 12:31 am
hey guys how to allocate misallocated disk in windows..i installed original windows vista in my computer and accidently misallocated more than 100 gig of the volume..my computer got 500 gig of harddisk space but how to allocate the misallocated one??
-need help
May 9th, 2008 at 7:17 am
really works very well thank you
May 10th, 2008 at 6:46 am
how do i rename the new volume.it tells me i donnot have enough space>
May 11th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Lol…. that only work for NTFS or FAT, not playing for HPFS+ and EXT partition. 3th party tools requirement always
May 12th, 2008 at 12:08 am
GOD DAMN!!!!!! THANKS BUDY!!!!!!!
i saved my day!!!! im runnin windows vista x64 n couldnt use a software to do that…. BUT……. HELL!!!!! so easy o.O
Thanks again!!!
May 12th, 2008 at 12:08 am
YOU saved…… LOL
May 18th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Hi, I have the same problem as Raghavendran. my laptop has two partitions ( C: & D: ). i cant create more than two additional partitions. what should i do? Please Help me!!!!
May 18th, 2008 at 10:12 am
I am running windows vista home premium and i shrunk my os drive. Now i have an unallocated space but when i try to do a new simple volume at the end it says “you cannot create a new volume in this unallocated space because the disk contains the maximum number of partitions.” This is the only partition that I have created. The other partitions i have are the Recovery drive and Two others: ones for media direct (I own a dell insprion 1720 laptop) and the other i dont know. Any Ideas?
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:37 am
thanks, the information was very helpful
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
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