Used minitools partition wizard with strange results... Need advice..

First off, long time reader first time poster...

The plan was to partition my hd and run a 32bit version of xp along with win7 64. I tried using the partitioning utility that's bundled with win7 without any luck due to unmovable files. So I head to the internets for advice and minitools get a lot of thumbs up. I had 30gig free on my 320gig hd so I thought a 20gig partition would be plenty for what I was planning to use it for. I go through the steps in minitools, click apply and receive a notice stating that drive c: is in use and that a restart would be require to complete the actions (not verbatim). So I click restart, the system restarts and minitools loads up a dos looking utility and begins the process. It doesn't get very far before a notice pops up stating something like "cant proceed, disk too fragmented, press any key to restart" (again not verbatim).

I restarted and windows boots up fine. My c: drive states its 0% fragmented but the real problem is that now I only have 10 gig free from my 30gig, my drive is stating it's 20 gig smaller, and there isnon partitioned drive F:!!!

Where did my gigs go?!?!? It's like minitools has designated the space for the partition without partitioning. I want my gigs back!! Please help

So here's a snippet, but it's stating I only have 298gb when it should be closer to 320. I probably wouldn't have noticed a problem except my free space on drive c: happened to be reduced by the amount I requested the new partition to be, but no new partition. I'm scratching my head on this one

Take a look here:
Hard Drive Size Capacities Calculator

320 = 298.02

Ok, I might be going crazy and the numbers are playing tricks on me. Your right the drive size does match, I totally jumped the gun there. But I'm sure I had 28-30gb free before I tried the partition, in fact I'm positive. If you have ever used minitools you know that when you go to re size your drive it pops up with a window with a graphic, a bar representing the drive size with a shaded blue area representing how much space you have used. There's arrows on either side and as you drag them back and forth they reduce the overall size of the partition. Below there's a text box that shows you exactly how much your allocating to the new partition. I had 30gb, I allocated 20gb leaving just under 10gb free space. I clicked apply went through the motions, was informed the process couldn't complete. Now I have less than 8gb remaining with no partition. This is so weird.

There would have been no need to lock the C: drive or reboot just to make a new partition in your unallocated space...I think what you really did (without realizing) is you resized the C: drive to use up the left-over space so C: itself is bigger now.

I just read your posts again and now I understand what you were attempting to do. This is weird indeed...in your screenshot, all the numbers look right. I don't know how your C: partition can suddenly be so full as to have less than 8GB free...maybe the NTFS filesystem no longer matches the partition size. Somehow that minitools thing must have messed things up.

You can use Disk Management or another partition editor such as EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition to shrink C: and regain free space for an XP partition.

After that, there really isn't anything more to be done - at this point you could restart and boot from the XP setup CD and simply ask it to install to the unallocated space (it will create a new partition on its own).

You'll run into the problem of making Windows 7 unbootable however, since the XP setup doesn't know about 7 and won't set up a dualboot for you. So you'll have to fix that with other tools after XP is installed, and that's a whole different story...

So strange, it's like minitools allocated the space so it can't be used by drive c: but drive c: still shows it contains the same volume but 20gig is being used that wasn't before. I've been searching for some type of file management software that will show me what my memory allocation is being used for. I figured a 20gig file would pop up and I could simple delete it and all would be well.

No such luck so far. I'm guessing that minitools at some point allocated the space but because the partitioning process didn't complete it didn't finish rewriting the volume and left the 20gig in some sort of written state where the c: drive shows it as being used.

If someone has any idea on how to locate this block of space I'd appreciate it. I'm starting to think it isn't a complete block but probably several with a strange alphanumeric file name which I'll just assume is some system file or files- sorry just thinking out loud there with the last part

Just a quick thought, after I resized c: volume to create the unallocated 20gb I clicked on create+ icon to create the partition. Under "create as" I selected "primary" not "logical". I figured c:\ and d:\ are both primary and so should this one. I think this is where I might of goofed.



Do you think this might be my issue? If so how do I fix it? The sad thing is I had to google "logical drive" because I didn't know what it meant. Now I'm thinking I should have selected the latter. Oh well, you live, you learn.

swtcorrado said:

I'm guessing that minitools at some point allocated the space but because the partitioning process didn't complete it didn't finish rewriting the volume and left the 20gig in some sort of written state where the c: drive shows it as being used.

That's exactly what I'm thinking too. Here's what I would try before anything else:

Step 1.

Open a command prompt and type chkdsk /f /v C: - Windows will tell you that the drive is locked, do you want to schedule a check upon restarting - answer 'Y'. Then reboot and let chkdsk do its thing at boot time.

After that see if it reclaimed the lost space. If not, proceed with:

Step 2.

Again, open a command prompt and type diskpart. When Diskpart has started it will provide you with its own command prompt.

Now type list disk - your main harddisk will probably show up first in the list as disk 0. Verify that this is so and then type select disk 0 (or whichever number your HD actually is).

Next, type list partition to list the partitions on this disk. You get the idea, you need to select the C: partition now. Assuming it's the first one, type select partition 1.

Now type extend filesystem. This will check if the NTFS filesystem matches the size of the partition it occupies, and if not, extend it to fill the partition.

(I haven't done an 'extend' on a running system partition before, so I don't know if diskpart might refuse the command at this point. If it does then you'll have to boot from your Windows setup DVD or some other kind of boot disc and run diskpart from there instead.)

Now you can exit Diskpart by, not surprisingly, typing exit, then close the command window.

Let me know if either of these steps resulted in recovering the lost space. :)

Cheers man, some good suggestions there. I'll check it out and get back with you. End of the week is crazy with family. Saturdays the day!!