Creating partitions on Vista Home

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A for [pine]Apple

Hi,

I've a 320 GB HDD on my Dell - Inspiron 1525. Vista comes company
installed and there are only two drives on it. C carrying OS and of
285 GB while a recovery drive D of around 20 space.

I want to create 3 more drives on my system. When I shrink the Volume
of C drive using Storage in Disk management console, I get only 90 GB
as free available volume for shrinking. How can I get more volume?
The drive is using 40 GB space at the moment.


How can I create new drives on my laptop's Hard Disk? And how about
creating an image of OS? I dont want to do all installations again?
Never created an image too.

Thanks!
 
Hi,

The drive tools in Vista are limited in that a) they cannot shrink a volume
beyond a locked, immovable file and b) the defragmenter cannot move these
either. The solution is to use a third party partitioning utility that
allows you to manipulate volumes from outside of Windows.

As to images, most prefer third party tools designed for this, such as
terabytes' Image for Windows, or Acronis' True Image.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
 
Thanks Rick!

I'll try these.

Hi,

The drive tools in Vista are limited in that a) they cannot shrink a volume
beyond a locked, immovable file and b) the defragmenter cannot move these
either. The solution is to use a third party partitioning utility that
allows you to manipulate volumes from outside of Windows.

As to images, most prefer third party tools designed for this, such as
terabytes' Image for Windows, or Acronis' True Image.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVPhttp://mvp.support.microsoft.com/
Windows help -www.rickrogers.org
My thoughtshttp://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

A for [pine]Apple said:
Hi,
Click to expand...
I've a 320 GB HDD on my Dell - Inspiron 1525. Vista comes company
installed and there are only two drives on it. C carrying OS and of
285 GB while a recovery drive D of around 20 space.
Click to expand...
I want to create 3 more drives on my system. When I shrink the Volume
of C drive using Storage in Disk management console, I get only 90 GB
as free available volume for shrinking. How can I get more volume?
The drive is using 40 GB space at the moment.
Click to expand...
How can I create new drives on my laptop's Hard Disk? And how about
creating an image of OS? I dont want to do all installations again?
Never created an image too.
Click to expand...
Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Or, turn off System Restore functions and reboot to remove the locked files.
Change the partition sizes, then turn System Restore back on.

Rick Rogers said:
Hi,

The drive tools in Vista are limited in that a) they cannot shrink a volume
beyond a locked, immovable file and b) the defragmenter cannot move these
either. The solution is to use a third party partitioning utility that
allows you to manipulate volumes from outside of Windows.

As to images, most prefer third party tools designed for this, such as
terabytes' Image for Windows, or Acronis' True Image.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

A for [pine]Apple said:
Hi,

I've a 320 GB HDD on my Dell - Inspiron 1525. Vista comes company
installed and there are only two drives on it. C carrying OS and of
285 GB while a recovery drive D of around 20 space.

I want to create 3 more drives on my system. When I shrink the Volume
of C drive using Storage in Disk management console, I get only 90 GB
as free available volume for shrinking. How can I get more volume?
The drive is using 40 GB space at the moment.


How can I create new drives on my laptop's Hard Disk? And how about
creating an image of OS? I dont want to do all installations again?
Never created an image too.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
There are many files, beside the System Volume Information folder that are
locked when the system is in use.

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience


Mark H said:
Or, turn off System Restore functions and reboot to remove the locked
files.
Change the partition sizes, then turn System Restore back on.

Rick Rogers said:
Hi,

The drive tools in Vista are limited in that a) they cannot shrink a volume
beyond a locked, immovable file and b) the defragmenter cannot move these
either. The solution is to use a third party partitioning utility that
allows you to manipulate volumes from outside of Windows.

As to images, most prefer third party tools designed for this, such as
terabytes' Image for Windows, or Acronis' True Image.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

A for [pine]Apple said:
Hi,

I've a 320 GB HDD on my Dell - Inspiron 1525. Vista comes company
installed and there are only two drives on it. C carrying OS and of
285 GB while a recovery drive D of around 20 space.

I want to create 3 more drives on my system. When I shrink the Volume
of C drive using Storage in Disk management console, I get only 90 GB
as free available volume for shrinking. How can I get more volume?
The drive is using 40 GB space at the moment.


How can I create new drives on my laptop's Hard Disk? And how about
creating an image of OS? I dont want to do all installations again?
Never created an image too.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Just stating what I did to get my partition down to 45GB from 300GB.
Seems System Restore likes to place it's protected files "out there" if the
space is available.
 
Most times the locked files are part of the MFT, disabling system restore
will not do anything to move them, but it will result in the loss of all
restore points. If something else goes wrong, there will be nothing to
recover to, not a good idea.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

Mark H said:
Or, turn off System Restore functions and reboot to remove the locked
files.
Change the partition sizes, then turn System Restore back on.

Rick Rogers said:
Hi,

The drive tools in Vista are limited in that a) they cannot shrink a volume
beyond a locked, immovable file and b) the defragmenter cannot move these
either. The solution is to use a third party partitioning utility that
allows you to manipulate volumes from outside of Windows.

As to images, most prefer third party tools designed for this, such as
terabytes' Image for Windows, or Acronis' True Image.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

A for [pine]Apple said:
Hi,

I've a 320 GB HDD on my Dell - Inspiron 1525. Vista comes company
installed and there are only two drives on it. C carrying OS and of
285 GB while a recovery drive D of around 20 space.

I want to create 3 more drives on my system. When I shrink the Volume
of C drive using Storage in Disk management console, I get only 90 GB
as free available volume for shrinking. How can I get more volume?
The drive is using 40 GB space at the moment.


How can I create new drives on my laptop's Hard Disk? And how about
creating an image of OS? I dont want to do all installations again?
Never created an image too.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
If applied to a clean install, it's fine, otherwise, make a backup.
Of course turning off System Restore will remove all restore points.
That's the point... to unlock the area preventing resizing of the partition.
Yes, there are "other" protected locked files, but amazingly they always
seem to be near the mass of other files (probably because they were put
there during installation and not during the creation of restore points.)
 
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