non destructive partitioning

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

No, Roy is mistaken. Disk Management will resize drive C: from
within Windows.

AAMOF, that may be the best way to do it as you're prevented from
doing bad things such as making the C: partition too small.

That is the best argument for using the Windows Disk Management utility.

The absolutely, positively best way is to size the partition before
installing Windows, which is what I did, but if the computer comes with
Windows preinstalled and no installation disks, you can't do that.
Another reason I never buy mass market computers.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Roy.

You did leave out one thing... Disk Management will not resize a mounted
partition.

I didn't leave it out, because I never hear of it. And the OP didn't
mention a "mounted partition".

So if the OP wanted to do this on his wife's laptop he would have to
remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an enclosure, then connect
it to another PC running Windows 7.

WHY? In Win7, Disk Management can easily shrink the boot volume in a
desktop. Why should it be different for a laptop? What is the
configuration of the laptop that you have in mind?

My experience with laptops is almost zero. But in the little Acer netbook
that I bought last year, I had no problem using Shrink volume, just as I did
on my desktop, after I removed the Win7 Starter edition and installed 32-bit
Win7 Ultimate. The HDD is only 160 GB, but I shrank Drive C: from the full
disk size down to 60 GB and created an 80 GB Drive D: for data storage. No
problems. And the 12 GB Recovery Partition and 102 MB System Reserved
partition were not disturbed. (Numbers are approximate, of course.)

(I do need to correct one number in my previous post: To Shrink by 150 GB,
enter 150000 MB, not 15000 MB, as I said. Needed one more zero.)

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"Roy Smith" wrote in message

Hi, Jeff.

Sure. You already have it in Win7: Disk Management.

Just click the orb or press the Windows key, type in "diskmgmt.msc"
(with or without the quotes) and press <Enter>.

You'll need to furnish Administrator credentials because this program is
powerful enough to do harm if used carelessly, but you should have no
problems with it.

Select the Boot Volume (probably Drive C and use the Shrink volume...
command. Reduce the size of that partition to about 100 GB. The new
size is up to you, actually, but make it at least 30 GB; Win7 really
grows with use! (Careful: The size is shown in MEGAbytes, not
GIGAbytes, so to shrink it by 150 GB, type in 15000 MB.) Then
right-click in the newly-vacated Free Space and select New Simple
volume... and follow the instructions. (The defaults are usually
correct.)

Be sure to name the new volume something descriptive; this "label" will
be written to the disk and will not change later, even if the drive
letter gets changed in some way. (The name will survive even if the
disk is moved to a different computer. It's a good idea to give a name
to your existing partitions, too.)

Of course, you can choose to divide your Free space into multiple
volumes depending on your needs/wants.

RC

You did leave out one thing... Disk Management will not resize a mounted
partition. So if the OP wanted to do this on his wife's laptop he would
have to remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an enclosure,
then connect it to another PC running Windows 7.

--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 6.0.2
Saturday, September 24, 2011 6:02:17 PM

 

[XS11E]

Another reason I never buy mass market computers.

My wallet say I now buy ONLY mass market computers. When sale prices
on HP, Lenovo, etc. get to less than 1/2 of the cost of building my
own, I'm going with HP! I've learned to de-crapify and HP or Compaq in
only a few minutes, it's very fast and if I install a retail version of
Windows as I often do, HP's website offers me all the drivers, etc.
that I need, free, all in one place and all working.

 

[Char Jackson]

At the time, I was fascinated with the fact, that my shiny new
OS had a "shrink" function. So I started playing with it.

The objective was to shrink things, to reduce the time to do
certain kinds of backups. (For the longest while, up until a
few days ago, that space was left unallocated.)

Since the objective was to "shrink things", and the thing to be shrunk
was a disk partition, the obvious choice would be a partition manager.

In the process, the first thing I noticed, was I got stuck at
160GB or so. On Googling for that, the mention of PerfectDisk
as a workaround came up.

I believe, at that point, I would have read the description of
PerfectDisk, if I wasn't already familiar with it, and I would have
discarded it since it's obviously not the right tool for the job.

So I didn't go in necessarily with partitioning in mind.

Well, just a second. You wanted to shrink a disk partition. That's a
partitioning operation.

I wanted
to see whether the Microsoft "shrink" could do the job, and it
couldn't. And since using the evaluation copy of a defragmenter
would get the job done, and then I could dump it, I was happy.

I get the feeling you enjoyed taking the long way around the barn.

 

[Stan Brown]

WHY? In Win7, Disk Management can easily shrink the boot volume in a
desktop. Why should it be different for a laptop?

I know that's a rhetorical question, but I can attest that it works
just fine in my Dell laptop. I shrank C, removed D, and then created
five new partitions.

 

[Jeff]

I was assuming that Jeff meant it was easier to back up *from* a second
partition, not *to* it.

That is correct. I backup to external USB hard drives. Having a separate
data partition allows me to backup that data partition frequently and
the system partition (which does not change often) much less frequently.

I successfully used one of the external partitioning utilities and now
have everything the way I want it.

Thanks everybody. I used to know this stuff but it is not something I do
everyday and so I was rusty.

 

[Paul]

Since the objective was to "shrink things", and the thing to be shrunk
was a disk partition, the obvious choice would be a partition manager.


I believe, at that point, I would have read the description of
PerfectDisk, if I wasn't already familiar with it, and I would have
discarded it since it's obviously not the right tool for the job.


Well, just a second. You wanted to shrink a disk partition. That's a
partitioning operation.


I get the feeling you enjoyed taking the long way around the barn.

Well, I was testing a new feature in Windows 7, just to see what
it would do. I'd never seen a "shrink" option on my other PCs
as part of the OS. Maybe it was hiding in "diskpart" and I
didn't notice.

As for partition managers as a concept, I use the one I bought
begrudgingly. It has bugs, but I have some idea which functions
have low risk, and which ones don't. Over time, I've also figured
out why it does things in a certain way.

To randomly grab a new partition manager and start using it, would
mean going through the same process I went through before - backups
before every application, testing to see if it fouled up anything
and so on. That's not work I was looking forward to, because as I
indicated, I had a whole day's work ahead of me to make room to
backup the entire laptop sector by sector. (Why - because I know
that works...)

If you've already dialed in a partition manager, and it works
in Windows 7, then naturally you'd reach for your tested and
trusted tool. I still don't have an alternative to the one
I use, that I trust. (GParted scares me, and it's already
broken something here.) And when I did a quick google on the
Easeus one, the first report I read, it bungled the movement
of a FAT32 from one disk to another. I can understand a "merge"
breaking on a partition manager, but simple movements from one
place to another should work and be low risk.

If there was a partition manager that stood head and shoulders above
the rest, never had any bugs, maybe this selection process wouldn't
be as annoying. Partition Manager design is a hard problem, because
there are so many variables. If you just took someone out of school
and had them write one, they'd get it wrong for sure, because some
of the trivia needed to finish the design, stretches back so far
in time.

Paul

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Stan.

But my question related to the paragraph that I quoted and you did not:

So if the OP wanted to do this on his wife's laptop he would have to
remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an enclosure, then connect
it to another PC running Windows 7.

Why would the OP "have to remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an
enclosure"?

Not a rhetorical question at all.

As Char just said to Paul in this thread, "I get the feeling you enjoyed
taking the long way around the barn. "

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"Stan Brown" wrote in message

WHY? In Win7, Disk Management can easily shrink the boot volume in a
desktop. Why should it be different for a laptop?

I know that's a rhetorical question, but I can attest that it works
just fine in my Dell laptop. I shrank C, removed D, and then created
five new partitions.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

I would also endorse the suggestion earlier in this thread to also
give your partitions a name - as an additional check that you are
working on the partition you intended to.

Amen!

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, again, Stan.

Sorry, but this thread got tangled. The "remove the drive" suggestion was
originally from Roy Smith (9/24/2011 6:02 PM CDT), not from you - so the
"around the barn" comment was for Roy. ;^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3538.0513) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"R. C. White" wrote in message

Hi, Stan.

But my question related to the paragraph that I quoted and you did not:

So if the OP wanted to do this on his wife's laptop he would have to
remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an enclosure, then connect
it to another PC running Windows 7.

Why would the OP "have to remove the drive from the laptop and put it in an
enclosure"?

Not a rhetorical question at all.

As Char just said to Paul in this thread, "I get the feeling you enjoyed
taking the long way around the barn. "

RC


"Stan Brown" wrote in message

WHY? In Win7, Disk Management can easily shrink the boot volume in a
desktop. Why should it be different for a laptop?

I know that's a rhetorical question, but I can attest that it works
just fine in my Dell laptop. I shrank C, removed D, and then created
five new partitions.

 

[Char Jackson]

Well, I was testing a new feature in Windows 7, just to see what
it would do. I'd never seen a "shrink" option on my other PCs
as part of the OS. Maybe it was hiding in "diskpart" and I
didn't notice.

As for partition managers as a concept, I use the one I bought
begrudgingly. It has bugs, but I have some idea which functions
have low risk, and which ones don't. Over time, I've also figured
out why it does things in a certain way.

I only have experience with Partition Magic (many years ago and
obsolete now) and Acronis Disk Director (recommended), neither of
which have ever failed me or given me any problems. There was one
other one that I had on a floppy disk, but I forget the name. Like the
two mentioned above, it just worked. Let us know which one you have so
others will know to avoid it.

To randomly grab a new partition manager and start using it, would
mean going through the same process I went through before - backups
before every application, testing to see if it fouled up anything
and so on. That's not work I was looking forward to, because as I
indicated, I had a whole day's work ahead of me to make room to
backup the entire laptop sector by sector. (Why - because I know
that works...)

Two things, and then I'll stop questioning you because you must be
getting frustrated by now.
1. I assume you had to go through the same testing process for
PerfectDisk, so you didn't save any time there.
2. I don't recommend a sector by sector copy unless there's a very
specific reason for it. It only bloats the size of the backup and
makes it take longer, giving you a bunch of empty or unallocated space
in your backup for (usually) no reason.

Partition Manager design is a hard problem, because there are so many
variables.

And yet you very, very rarely hear of anyone having a problem with
them. They must not be that hard, after all.

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

I only have experience with Partition Magic (many years ago and
obsolete now) and Acronis Disk Director (recommended), neither of
which have ever failed me or given me any problems. There was one
other one that I had on a floppy disk, but I forget the name. Like
the two mentioned above, it just worked. Let us know which one you
have so others will know to avoid it.

I was really pissed when Symantec killed Partition Magic. I'd been using
it for years.

 

[Jeff]

I was really pissed when Symantec killed Partition Magic. I'd been using
it for years.

Me too.
Jeff

 

[Char Jackson]

I was really pissed when Symantec killed Partition Magic. I'd been using
it for years.

I was disappointed, as well. It was a very elegant tool at the time.

 

[Brian Gregory [UK]]

I only have experience with Partition Magic (many years ago and
obsolete now) and Acronis Disk Director (recommended), neither of
which have ever failed me or given me any problems. There was one
other one that I had on a floppy disk, but I forget the name. Like the
two mentioned above, it just worked. Let us know which one you have so
others will know to avoid it.


Two things, and then I'll stop questioning you because you must be
getting frustrated by now.
1. I assume you had to go through the same testing process for
PerfectDisk, so you didn't save any time there.
2. I don't recommend a sector by sector copy unless there's a very
specific reason for it. It only bloats the size of the backup and
makes it take longer, giving you a bunch of empty or unallocated space
in your backup for (usually) no reason.


And yet you very, very rarely hear of anyone having a problem with
them. They must not be that hard, after all.

I rarely hear of anyone using them at all.

 

[Brian Gregory [UK]]

2. I don't recommend a sector by sector copy unless there's a very
specific reason for it. It only bloats the size of the backup and
makes it take longer, giving you a bunch of empty or unallocated space
in your backup for (usually) no reason.

A good disk imager will skip over the unallocated areas when backing up (and
when restoring again).

 

[Char Jackson]

A good disk imager will skip over the unallocated areas when backing up (and
when restoring again).

I disagree. IMHO, a good imaging program will give you the option to
do it either way. I've never personally needed to do a sector by
sector image backup, but Paul has said he finds it useful.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

A good disk imager will skip over the unallocated areas when backing up (and
when restoring again).

Except when a sector-by-sector copy is appropriate.

One of my cloner programs allows one to copy every single sector by
setting what it calls the "forensic" mode.

I'll leave the purpose as an exercise for the reader.

 

[Brian Gregory [UK]]

I disagree. IMHO, a good imaging program will give you the option to
do it either way.

Well yes, obviously.

I've never personally needed to do a sector by
sector image backup, but Paul has said he finds it useful.

So you regard sector by sector as implying all sectors are backed up
including unallocated ones?

 

[Joe Morris]

So you regard sector by sector as implying all sectors are backed up
including unallocated ones?

"Sector-by-sector_ copying is sometimes named "forensic copy", and that's
exactly what it does: all sectors are backed up blindly, and on restore
every sector is written to the target.

There are three situations in which a sector backup is necessary:

1) The backup program does not know how to handle the file system used in
the partition, and thus has no way to know what sectors have valid data and
need to be backed up, nor how to reconstruct the file system control blocks
on restore.

2) The entire file system is encrypted, and the backup program can see only
cyphertext. In this case it may know everything about the file system
structure but cannot see it.

3) Forensic investigations, in which case you need to make a working copy of
the disk involved in a manner that is *completely* identical to the
original. You generally want to keep the original locked up and unaltered
in order to preserve its evidentiary value, and critical data may be present
in unallocated sectors and/or in residual data not cleared from
no-longer-in-use field in file system control blocks. File-level backups
will usually fail to copy either.

Of course, for normal distribution backup/restore, and for
backup-against-disaster backups, you want a file-level backup, which is the
way that most backup programs I've seen recently work by default.
File-level backup has the added advantage that it's generally agnostic to
partition size (as long as the receiving partition on restore is large
enough to hold all of the files), and the restore will usually give you a
defragmented volume.

Joe Morris