Re: Disk Manager not allowing me to shrink partition...

[TheMadPoster]

I have a 74 gig drive with 53gigs free. Vista Home Premium installed. I
was allowed to shrink to shrink the partition once, freeing up 1.4 gigs.. I
want to dual boot to 64bit Vista so I need to free about 20gigs to install
64bit. It keeps telling me that if snapshots (?) and Paging files are
stored on the drive that I am trying to partition it will reduce the size
that I am allowed to shrink. Well I have no idea what snapshots are...
System Restore is OFF, and my virtual memory is set to 1.53 gigs. My
recycle bin is set to 500megs, and IE7's cache is set to 1meg.

So...wtf? I have searched all over the net to find an answer. So here I
am... Anyone know how I can repartition my drive??

[Jane C]

Did you defrag the drive before shrinking? There may be system files that
are fixed in place on the disk - if they can't be moved, then that will
limit the available shrink space.

[TheMadPoster]

I did find that solution online in a forum somewhere so I tried it, with no
luck. I am at wits end with this thing.
I'm running a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop with a 60 GB hard drive. The drive says I have 30 GB free, yet will only let me "shrink" the partition by around 10 GB. Let me know if you figure this out.

It perfectly allows you to shrink a partition, although I wouldn't trust it.
It almost killed my hard drive.

[R. McCarty]

Turn off Volume Shadow Copy and Hibernate. Unless needed, I would
turn off System Restore also. The built-in defrag cannot move MFT type
data. I would download the trial version of Perfect Disk 8.0. Do both a
Offline and GUI based defrag. Then retry Diskmgmt.Msc to shrink the
volume. This type of operation is always risky, so I'd take a Image of
the volume in it's current state - Things can and do go wrong as PCs have
a wicked sense of humor.

[Richard Urban]

I wanted to shrink then Vista partition from 60 gig to 30 gig. I first tried
using Vista Disk Management. I could only get down to 42 gig due to being
blocked by unmovable files on the Vista partition. After booting into the
Acronis Disk Director Suite (version 10) I was able to shrink the partition
down to my
desired 30 gig.

The partition survived the operation and I have been using Vista RTM for the
past 2 months with no strange occurrences.

[TheMadPoster]

Resolution,

To completely turn off hibernation and set my paging file to no paging file,
defrag with PerfectDisk and then I was able to shrink it.

Turning off hibernation is done ONLY on the command line and was found by
googling it @ google.com

"Turning off hibernation in vista" was the query I used to accomplish this.

The paging file set to no paging was done through My Computer, properties,
advanced...etc..

PerfectDisk is a nice defragger and worth the $40 I dropped on it today.

Hope this helps some of you.

Just and FYI, I am a windows wiz, and rarely come accross a Bill Gates
puzzle I cannot solve. For those who helped in steering me towards an
answer, thank you. You were the seed. If you need help, post it here, I
will try to help you if I can. BTW, legitimate copies of Vista only, if you
downloaded it...there is no help for you. ;-)

[Bob Taylor]

How does one get that space back? For instance I shrunk the main volume
by 10GiB on my laptop to allow for a Linux OS. If I choose to dump
Linux will the main volume then absorb the space again? I'm obviously
not very Vista savvy so thanks.

[stevesmith1990]

hey, i had the same problem!! easily fixed, all you need to do using the diskmgmt.msc:

-format partition
-delete partition (should come up with unallocated space)
-extend the other partition

hope this helps!! coment back

[julzx94]

You need to:
1) Disable hibernation through command prompt. Type in elevated prompt:
powercfg -h off
2) Disable system restore: Start Menu, rightclick on My Computer, click
system protection in left-hand list, uncheck the drive you want to
disable it on, and confirm your choice.
3) Disable the pagefile: Open up System in Control Panel, then Advanced
System Settings \ Advanced \ Performance \ Advanced \ Change \ No Paging
File.
4) Disable the kernel memory dump. Open up System in Control Panel,
then Advanced System Settings \ Advanced \ Startup and Recovery \
Settings \ System Failure \ change drop-down menu to (none).
5) Run the disk cleanup wizard and be sure to delete all previous
restore points and hibernation files.
6) Reboot
7) Download the 30-day free trial of PerfectDisk 10 Professional.
8) In the PD10 interface, select you drive and run a SMARTPlacement
defrag
9) When that is done, do a consolidate free space defrag. This will
create the largest chunks of fre space as possible.
10) When that is finished, in the main page of PD10, right next to the
size of your hard drive, check the box that says "boot." This will
defrag Windows system files that can only be moved when Windows is not
yet booted. This will make it defrag system files EVERY time you boot,
so you should probably turn it off after the first use.

Using these 10 steps, I went from 3GB available for a partition to over
104GB. I would strongly advise against uing GParted and similar
utilities unless you REALLY know what you're doing. After you have done
all the partitions you wish, you should probably re-enable system
restore, hibernation, page filing, and kernel memory dump. I now have a
200GB Vista x64 Home Premium partition (main), a 25GB partition for
testing Windows 7, and a 10GB recovery partition. Cheers!

[M. Sadeq]

Thank you for that clear and useful guide, julzx94. It worked perfectly here. Step 8) took about 8 hours with a 300GB drive, step 9) around three quarters of an hour, and step 10) a few minutes. (The time estimates the program gave were widely off mark).

After this, the amount of free space for a second partition increased from 27GB to 150GB.

I just want to notice you have to run the cmd as an administrator by right click on the cmd icon and selecting " Run as administrator" so you can use this command line also:
powercfg.exe /hibernate off

[liujing1988]

Hey guys! I’ve found a free 64 bit Windows partition manager by accident. I downloaded it and used it. This software was amazing and easy to use. The most important is that it is free here I would like to share it with you. Following are copied from the website:

Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager designed by MT Solution Ltd. It supports 32/64 bit Windows Operating System including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful but free partition manager to manage their hard disk partition such as Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition and Partition Recovery.

Partition Wizard comes absolutely free for Home user and free of charge for business user. Home users, business users, system administrators can easily use this Windows based software to manage their disk partitions. Download it for free from and enjoy the new technology and new experience of Partition Wizard.

[Bill Daggett]

Hey guys! I’ve found a free 64 bit Windows partition manager by accident. I downloaded it and used it. This software was amazing and easy to use. The most important is that it is free here I would like to share it with you. Following are copied from the website:

Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager designed by MT Solution Ltd. It supports 32/64 bit Windows Operating System including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful but free partition manager to manage their hard disk partition such as Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition and Partition Recovery.

Partition Wizard comes absolutely free for Home user and free of charge for business user. Home users, business users, system administrators can easily use this Windows based software to manage their disk partitions.

I kind of like the e-mail address he uses :-)

What do you think the odds are that I will try the product?

On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being "definitely" and 1 being "no
freaking way"... 1.

[JC]

I did all the steps. It has increased the substancial amount of space. But
the original problem is still there. When I try to do shrink partition in
Disk Management, it always says "access denied".

I want to create a new partition. How do I do it?

[Gordon]

If you are trying to shrink the C or boot partition then it won't. You will
need third-party software to do this.
A favorite is BootIT NG.

Whch has to be paid for.

Try EASEUS Partition Master... it's free.

[Rick Rogers]

Actually, with the BootIT NG diskette you simply cancel out of installation
and work from the disk. It will allow the partition resizing to be done at
no cost.