partitioning question

I made the mistake of waiting too long before partitioning my 1TB drive on my new system. I defragged the disk, then opened up the W7 partitioning tool, and the smallest it would let me shrink to was almost 500GB, even though I have less than 80GB on the drive.

I'd like to have my OS partition as small as practical, have a big partition for data, and a couple of hundred GB for Ubuntu.

There is obviously some unmovable files that are not letting me shrink my OS partition any more, and I don't want to have to wipe the disk and do a re-install (this is a brand new Dell 64 bit machine) unless I have to. Is there a 3rd party app out there that might work better?

Can I find out which files are way out in the middle of the disk in case they can be deleted?

I have been looking at an app called Partition Wizard free edition, seems to have pretty good reviews - has anyone here used it?

thanks

I would start with a deffrager that optimizes the disc to see if this compacts enough stuff on the HD to ge a smaller shrink too, here is one I use. Disk Defrag - Fast and Safe Defragmenter for Your Disks This one is free there are many open source or free programs that will do this, this one runs fairly fast. There are programs and ways to move the unmovable files that you will see in the defragger, so sooner or later somebody with more expertise will help you. Which Linux are you installing, I have been using Lucid since the first ISO runs great. Take a look at the optimization part of defragging if your not familiar with this.

Can I find out which files are way out in the middle of the disk in case they can be deleted?

It is the MFT (Master File Table) that sits in the middle of the disk. You better not touch that. There are some OEM products that can move it, but that may be hazardous. I have seen a few guys getting into trouble and others that apparently were successful. Because of that, I do not recommend any.

I have used Partition Wizard and it works great. It is very good free partitioning program and will do exactly what you need to do. You could also use Paragon Partition Manager free edition. It is 64-bit compatible and can do what you need to do. Good luck, I highly recommend Partition Wizard. I just used it the other day to do exactly what you are doing and it worked great.

Run the superior free Auslogics Disk Defragger and examine the Drive Map to see if there are System Files blocking shrinkage from the right.

If this is the case, Partition Wizard bootable CD can still shrink but there is a small risk involved - smaller than most managers which can more easily fail.

If you want to actually move the System Files which are in the way of shrinkage, use Perfect Disk 10 trial version Offline Defragger set to Compact the HD. It is the best tool for that job.

Otherwise, go ahead and run Partition Wizard Resize from CD, but back up your files as failure is a slight possibility.