Win7 Partition

[BeeJ]

Does Win7 have a facility to create a partition on its own HD?
i.e Win7 is on a 500G HD and I would like to resize the Win7 portion to
100G and have a D: on the same HD with 400G.

If not, is there a freebie (only doing this once) partitioner that will
do this with an active Win7 running it or do I use a "DOS" window
(whatever it is called now)?

 

[Percival P. Cassidy]

Does Win7 have a facility to create a partition on its own HD?
i.e Win7 is on a 500G HD and I would like to resize the Win7 portion to
100G and have a D: on the same HD with 400G.

If not, is there a freebie (only doing this once) partitioner that will
do this with an active Win7 running it or do I use a "DOS" window
(whatever it is called now)?

I have read that Win7 may put some of its own files close to (or at) the
"far end" of a disk, making it impossible to shrink the drive while
Windows is running -- but you could try it.

A free Third-party utility that seems to work OK is Partition Magician.
It allows you to create a bootable CD (Linux based, IIRC), so that you
can fiddle around with your disk layout when Windows is *not* running.

It's advisable to take a good backup or two before you do anything like
this, whether using Windows' own capabilities or using Partition Magician.

Perce

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, BeeJ.

Disk Management will USUALLY do all of this. Try if; if it doesn't work,
post back with details and we probably can help.

First, of course, just Shrink the Volume. Tell it to shrink C: by 400,000
MB. (DM's prompts are in MB, not GB, so you'll have to think in that order
of magnitude.) Unless blocked by an unmovable file, or by the size of the
volume's contents if you already have more than 100 GB in there, it should
do this in much less than a minute.

But, if Shrink Volume can't shrink the full 400 GB in one gulp, you might do
it in stages. Often the unmovable file is part of the directory structure.
You may be able to shrink the volume by 200 GB, down to 300 GB. Then shrink
it again by another 100 GB.

Here's a paragraph from Windows 7 Inside Out, by Bott, Siechert and Stinson
(p. 910):
"Be aware that page files and volume shadow copy files cannot be moved
during the defragmentation process. This means that you might not have as
much room to shrink as you would like. Microsoft also advises that the
amount by which you can shrink a volume is “transient†and depends on what
is happening on the volume at the time. In other words, if you are trying to
eliminate, say, 10 GB from the volume and Disk Management can manage only 7,
take the 7 and then try for more later."

There are other ways to do this, but try this first and let us know the
results.

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


"BeeJ" wrote in message
Does Win7 have a facility to create a partition on its own HD?
i.e Win7 is on a 500G HD and I would like to resize the Win7 portion to
100G and have a D: on the same HD with 400G.

If not, is there a freebie (only doing this once) partitioner that will
do this with an active Win7 running it or do I use a "DOS" window
(whatever it is called now)?

 

[Stan Brown]

Does Win7 have a facility to create a partition on its own HD?

Click the Start button, type "disk manage" without quotes, and select
"Create and format hard disk partitions". You'll need to shrink the
existing partition to make room to create new ones.

As always, do a complete backup of your system first, just in case
something goes wrong.

 

[Stan Brown]

I have read that Win7 may put some of its own files close to (or at) the
"far end" of a disk, making it impossible to shrink the drive while
Windows is running -- but you could try it.

It's been about a year, but if I recall correctly I shrank my Windows
7 partition without difficulty, while Windows was running.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

It's been about a year, but if I recall correctly I shrank my Windows
7 partition without difficulty, while Windows was running.

Windows 7's own partition-moving utility can shrink the drive it is
running on, while it is running - but not beyond where some "immovable
files" are; when I tried to shrink a single 500G partition (wanting to
make a 30G C: for OS and software, leaving the rest for a D: for data),
I found that these files were about half way "up" the disc. From what
I've read here, the half-way situation is not uncommon. But - especially
if you only want to shrink C: by a small amount - try the built-in
utility first, since it's there.

I found a third-party utility - the latest version of which is I think
at http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html - which
was able to move these awkward files; there are lots of others, that was
just the first one I tried, and it worked and was easy to use, so I
didn't look at any of the others.

(If I understand what some others are saying in this thread, the awkward
files may reappear half way up the shrunk partition again after a
reboot, so one could perhaps use the built-in utility repeatedly. But
I'm not sure I've got the right end of the stick on that.)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I'm sometimes a bit bewildered by that, really - there are no young people in
it, there's no sex, there's no violence, no car chases and there's no action
and no vampires. - Colin Firth on the success of the film "The King's Speech".
Radio Times 10-16 September 2011

 

[Paul]

Windows 7's own partition-moving utility can shrink the drive it is
running on, while it is running - but not beyond where some "immovable
files" are; when I tried to shrink a single 500G partition (wanting to
make a 30G C: for OS and software, leaving the rest for a D: for data),
I found that these files were about half way "up" the disc. From what
I've read here, the half-way situation is not uncommon. But - especially
if you only want to shrink C: by a small amount - try the built-in
utility first, since it's there.

I found a third-party utility - the latest version of which is I think
at http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html - which
was able to move these awkward files; there are lots of others, that was
just the first one I tried, and it worked and was easy to use, so I
didn't look at any of the others.

(If I understand what some others are saying in this thread, the awkward
files may reappear half way up the shrunk partition again after a
reboot, so one could perhaps use the built-in utility repeatedly. But
I'm not sure I've got the right end of the stick on that.)

The built-in utility won't move the metadata itself. The built-in utility
can "shrink the partition some more", if you can find a third party utility
to move that (blocking) metadata out of the way. And the third party utility
may precisely position the offending thing, half way down the newly resized
partition. In which case, it may take several cycles of shrink/move to get
the job done.

Or a third party partition manager, can do it all in one shot (depending on
how good it is).

Paul

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: []

I found a third-party utility - the latest version of which is I
think at http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html -
which was able to move these awkward files; there are lots of others,
that was just the first one I tried, and it worked and was easy to
use, so I didn't look at any of the others.
(If I understand what some others are saying in this thread, the
awkward files may reappear half way up the shrunk partition again
after a reboot, so one could perhaps use the built-in utility
repeatedly. But I'm not sure I've got the right end of the stick on that.)

The built-in utility won't move the metadata itself. The built-in utility
can "shrink the partition some more", if you can find a third party utility
to move that (blocking) metadata out of the way. And the third party utility
may precisely position the offending thing, half way down the newly resized
partition. In which case, it may take several cycles of shrink/move to get
the job done.

Ah, so Windows itself (including the utilities that come with it) will
never move the offending material.

Or a third party partition manager, can do it all in one shot (depending on
how good it is).

Paul

The one I mentioned above seemed to do it no trouble.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G.5AL-IS-P--Ch++(p)Ar@T0H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I'm sometimes a bit bewildered by that, really - there are no young people in
it, there's no sex, there's no violence, no car chases and there's no action
and no vampires. - Colin Firth on the success of the film "The King's Speech".
Radio Times 10-16 September 2011

 

[Percival P. Cassidy]

I have read that Win7 may put some of its own files close to (or at) the
"far end" of a disk, making it impossible to shrink the drive while
Windows is running -- but you could try it.

A free Third-party utility that seems to work OK is Partition Magician.
It allows you to create a bootable CD (Linux based, IIRC), so that you
can fiddle around with your disk layout when Windows is *not* running.

Oops! Make that "Partition Wizard"