Out of 150GB free space only 66MB available for partition ?

HDD: Total capacity 500GB partitioned to C & D equally.
O S: Windows 7 Pro. installed on C.
Actual space on C: About 223GB.
Space occupied : About 73GB.
Free space on C: About 150GB. (The properties of the partition show so.)

Tried to make another partition out of the 150GB free space on C.
So, I ran an estimation to find out the free space available for a new partition.
After an automatic calculation, report showed only 66MB available.

Astounded.
Properties of the partition show 150GB free space.
Why only 66MB available out of 150GB of free space?

Please help.

Thank you!

A screen shot of your Disk Management would help out here, but if you are breaking off part of the available space for another partition, it would reduce your free space left to the existing partition.

Free space can't be used for a new partition...it is already part of one. You are looking for "Unallocated Space." Shrink your existing partition to create some.

DeaconFrost said:

A screen shot of your Disk Management would help out here, but if you are breaking off part of the available space for another partition, it would reduce your free space left to the existing partition.

Thanks, Mr. DeaconFrost

A screen shot would be of little help due to the fact that it is in a completely different
language.

It is said that Vista & Win7 have disk manager built in. So, I want to try it out.
The method applied here is compressing the existing partion, to squeeze some
space out of the free space for another or an add-on partition.
The first step prior to compressing is to estimate the available free space for
such an add-on partition.
Estimation report shows that only 66MB free space is available.
This is done on partition C of my HDD where Vista is installed.
Total capacity of this C is 250GB (about 225GB in reality).
Total space occupied is around 75GB.
So, the properties of this partition show 150GB free space.
What I do not understand is that why only 66MB out of 150GB is available.

The estimation carried out on the other partion D which is similar to C reports the same result except for a bit more available space, 103MB.

What occupies or reserves the free space?

Thank you!

MacGyvr said:

Free space can't be used for a new partition...it is already part of one. You are looking for "Unallocated Space." Shrink your existing partition to create some.

Mr. MacGyvr

Thank you!

No. The free space can not be directly partitioned as a new partition.

Before compressing the existing partion to where an additional partition shall be added
the Windows' disk manager runs as estimation. The report of this estimation states that the available free space for another partion on C containing Vista is only 66MB
and on D containing Win7 is only 103MD.

Capacity of partition C: 250GB and free space 150GB.
Capacity of partition D: 250GB and free space 168GB.

I do not understand the factors that affect the calculation of the estimation.

Thank you!

seavixen32 said:

Regardless of the language difficulties, you really do need to show us a screenshot of your disk management configuration before we can give you any meaningful help.

To repeat what has already been said, free space is part of an existing partition, whereas unallocated space is a raw section of the drive i.e. it doesn't have a partition allocated to it.

From what I can make out, you have 500GB of drive space divided into two partitions of 250GB each. In order to create another partition you would need to shrink one of your existing partitions.



As you can see, this shows the configuration of a single partition/drive, which would have to be shrunk to create new, unallocated space for a new partition. The free space shown is available for you to use to store data.

In addition, Windows 7's disk manager is very basic and will only let you shrink a partition once. You need a third-party tool such as Partition Wizard.

Thank you, Mr. Seavixen32!

What I am trying to get is a 10GB or 20GB unallocated free space which can then be allocated as a partition. It puzzles me that out of 150GB free space only 66MB abailable for another partition.

The hereunder are four screenshots.
The first one (Acer C) is of the partition where Vista is installed.
The 2nd one (Data C) is of the partition where Win7 is installed.
The 3rd one (Free Space 150GB) is also of the partion where Vista is installed.
The 4th one (66MB) is the estimation repart statement prior to compression.

Thank you and your help is really appreciated!

hkuenph, thank you for providing the screenshots of your disk layout.

The reason you cannot shrink your C drive any further is because the partition is badly fragmented.

You have 154Gb of free space on the drive in question that is available to use, but because the drive is badly fragmented you can only SHRINK it by a further 66Mb.

The text at the bottom of your fourth screenshot translates as follows:

You cannot shrink a volume beyond a point where any unmovable files are located. See the "Defrag" event in the application log for detailed information about the operation when it has completed.

You need to defragment the drive first, and then go back into Disk Management to see whether the shrink space has increased. If it hasn't it means you can't shrink that partition any further.

AS you upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, the Acer Recovery Partition is unusable.

Did you make your Recovery disks?

Why do you need a 4th partition?

You need to defragment the drive first, and then go back into Disk Management to see whether the shrink space has increased. If it hasn't it means you can't shrink that partition any further.

Often people struggle with achieving their partitioning aims with Windows 7's own utilities. The chief cause being that Windows has placed a system file at/near the end of the disk/volume which hinders the anticipated outcome, even after performing a Windows defrag.

To get around this you can either use a third party partitioning solution, or you will need to perform a number of boot time defrags, shrinks and/or expands, plus restarts (usually 2-4 cycles in my experience). This option also requires a third party solution that offers boot time defrag (be sure to check how any such software handles Windows shadow copies/restore points for this type of operation), whereby the system files can be moved whilst Windows is offline. I have used PerfeckDisk for the purpose on a number of machines and without any problems.

Typically;

Shrink and/or expand > restart > boot time defrag > restart > shrink and/or expand > restart > normal defrag > restart > shrink and/or expand

Hope this helps.