Solved Unmoveable System Files other than pagefile and hiberfil?

[bododiehn]

I am trying to shrink a C:\ partition on a Dell R14 laptop running W7 Home Premium 64. I moved the pagefile to D, removed hiberfil.sys, and there are still files way out at 200GB somewhere in a folder, unmoveable by Perfect Disk. No Restore points; System Volume Information is empty.
What could these files be, and how do I eliminate or move them temporarily? My aim is to have a windows partition of around 50GB (for easier and smaller imaging), and have my apps on D: and data on E: This was easy in XP.

 

[JimLewandowski]

If you try to SHRINK via Windows Disk Management applet, in the event log (Event Viewer), a record is written that specifies what file prevented shrinking further leftwards (smaller). Can't recall which event viewer log, but might be system log or something.

 

[whs]

The file that is 'Way out' is the MFT (master file table). Disk Management cannot move that. You have to use the bootable CD of Partition Wizard. That will move it during the shrinking process.

I recommend to make an image of your C:\ before you manipulate it - just in case.

Btw: moving the pagefile to another partition/disk makes no sense.

 

[bododiehn]

Problem solved

Thanks, WHS, the Partition Wizard CD took care of my problem. It does make sense to relocate the pagefile to another partition if your aim is to keep C: small for easier imaging. Hiberfil has to be on C: though.

 

[whs]

Thanks, WHS, the Partition Wizard CD took care of my problem. It does make sense to relocate the pagefile to another partition if your aim is to keep C: small for easier imaging. Hiberfil has to be on C: though.

Nah, relocating the pagefile for imaging is certainly the wrong reason. Since it is most likely empty or nearly empty when you image, it will be compressed to nothing. It is a lot more practical to leave it where it is and set it to 2GBs.

And for what do you need the hiberfile. Very few people use hibernation these days. In my book it is a completely useless vintage function. Especially with a SSD. When I walk away from my system, I shut it off. I can wait the 15 seconds it takes to reboot.

 

[bbearren]

It does make sense to relocate the pagefile to another partition if your aim is to keep C: small for easier imaging.

I have my pagefile relocated to a dedicated partition on another HDD, but not for disk imaging; my imaging software has options to leave the pagefile and hiberfil.sys out of the image.

 

[F5ing]

One reason someone may want to hibernate rather than shutdown is they still have a bunch of "work/stuff" in progress opened and don't have time or feel like spending the time save/close/organize before killing it. Or, they have a bunch of windows opened and arranged "just right" for some particular task. I use it on laptops rather often.

BTW, Clonezilla allows you to make a clone of a disk/partition while omitting both the pagefile and the hibernate file. Works just fine; I use it all the time when fixing other's machines. If you need to use the clone to restore the disk Windows just creates the two files on the fly.

 

[F5ing]

I have my pagefile relocated to a dedicated partition on another HDD, but not for disk imaging; my imaging software has options to leave the pagefile and hiberfil.sys out of the image.

Clonezilla? Or something else.

Moved the pagefile for speed? I had done the same to a couple machines in the past: make sure the partition was first on the disk (on the outer edge), only large enough for the pagefile (plus a little free space), and formatted as FAT32.

 

[whs]

One reason someone may want to hibernate rather than shutdown is they still have a bunch of "work/stuff" in progress opened and don't have time or feel like spending the time save/close/organize before killing it. Or, they have a bunch of windows opened and arranged "just right" for some particular task. I use it on laptops rather often.

Yeah, I can see that. I guess I am never in such a serious position. My PCs are only toys and not for real work.

 

[bbearren]

I have my pagefile relocated to a dedicated partition on another HDD, but not for disk imaging; my imaging software has options to leave the pagefile and hiberfil.sys out of the image.

Clonezilla? Or something else.

Moved the pagefile for speed? I had done the same to a couple machines in the past: make sure the partition was first on the disk (on the outer edge), only large enough for the pagefile (plus a little free space), and formatted as FAT.

I use BootIt by TeraByte Unlimited for boot manager, partition work, drive imaging, etc.
And yes, the pagefile is the first partition on the second disk, 4.5GB FAT32 with a 4GB fixed pagefile. I use the same setup with every machine.

 

[F5ing]

And yes, the pagefile is the first partition on the second disk, 4.5GB FAT32 with a 4GB fixed pagefile. I use the same setup with every machine.

Oops. I mentioned FAT where it should be FAT32 due to file size. Corrected my earlier post.

 

[Oubadah]

And yes, the pagefile is the first partition on the second disk, 4.5GB FAT32 with a 4GB fixed pagefile. I use the same setup with every machine.

Does using FAT32 make any difference vs NTFS? I just read a couple of accounts said it made no difference at all.

 

[F5ing]

Does using FAT32 make any difference vs NTFS? I just read a couple of accounts said it made no difference at all.

Don't know how noticable it would be (speedwise). But you would have to think it could be faster because you would definitely avoid all the extra stuff NTFS does in the background (journaling/indexing/permissions/etc.).

Plus, Windows tends to want to put some default folders on NTFS volumes even when you tell it not to (System Volume Imformation, $Recycle Bin). At least XP Pro did that. It was not too easy to get rid of them permanently. There were other programs that I've messed around with that wanted to add default folders to any NTFS volumes they ran across. Right off the bat I remember that AVG antivirus always added a Quarantine directory to every NTFS volume it ever scanned, even if it left it empty. I like clean volumes!!

 

[Oubadah]

Does using FAT32 make any difference vs NTFS? I just read a couple of accounts said it made no difference at all.

Don't know how noticable it would be (speedwise). But you would have to think it could be faster because you would definitely avoid all the extra stuff NTFS does in the background (journaling/indexing/permissions/etc.).

Plus, Windows tends to want to put some default folders on NTFS volumes even when you tell it not to (System Volume Imformation, $Recycle Bin). At least XP Pro did that. It was not too easy to get rid of them permanently. There were other programs that I've messed around with that wanted to add default folders to any NTFS volumes they ran across. Right off the bat I remember that AVG antivirus always added a Quarantine directory to every NTFS volume it ever scanned, even if it left it empty. I like clean volumes!!

Does it affect anything else having partitions with different file systems on the same disk?

 

[F5ing]

Does it affect anything else having partitions with different file systems on the same disk?

Nope. At least not anything that I ever encoutered (I mean, when you say anything, I feel I need to qualify that answer). The FAT32 partition resides just fine with NTFS partitions. I've cloned, moved, erased, backed up, whatever, with no problem.

And anyway, whatever filesystem you go with, it's easy enough to reformat to the other filesystem.

 

[Oubadah]

Does it affect anything else having partitions with different file systems on the same disk?

Nope. At least not anything that I ever encoutered (I mean, when you say anything, I feel I need to qualify that answer). The FAT32 partition resides just fine with NTFS partitions. I've cloned, moved, erased, backed up, whatever, with no problem.

Yes those were the sort of thing I had in mind.

A question for bbearren, would you still use the 4GB pagefile size for systems with more RAM? (16GB)

 

[Oubadah]

Plus, Windows tends to want to put some default folders on NTFS volumes even when you tell it not to (System Volume Imformation, $Recycle Bin). At least XP Pro did that. It was not too easy to get rid of them permanently. There were other programs that I've messed around with that wanted to add default folders to any NTFS volumes they ran across. Right off the bat I remember that AVG antivirus always added a Quarantine directory to every NTFS volume it ever scanned, even if it left it empty. I like clean volumes!!

On this side-topic, I just checked the contents of a drive that hasn't been used (by me) for anything other than storing and running a couple of installers (drivers) when I was first setting up Windows. So why is there a msdownld.tmp there?

 

[whs]

1. The only limitation you have with Fat32 is that the maximum blocksize you can can write to it is 4GBs. That is rarely a problem, but e.g. Windows data backup may use that blocksize if you backup a chunk of data that is over 4GB large. But most other programs (even imaging programs) would break it down into 4GB blocks.

2. With your kind of RAM, the maximum pagefile size I would use is 2GB - maybe even 1GB.

 

[bbearren]

A question for bbearren, would you still use the 4GB pagefile size for systems with more RAM? (16GB)

Yes. I have 8GB RAM on this machine but only a 4GB pagefile. The size I chose is based more on habit than reason. With 32-bit XP, the maximum pagefile size was 4,095MB, 1MB shy of 4GB, which was the fixed pagefile size I always used.

In addition to the (maybe unnoticable) slight speed increase of having the pagefile on the first partition of a second HDD, having a pagefile of fixed size on a dedicated partition eliminates fragmentation of the pagefile, another (maybe unoticable) slight speed increase, so I chose Windows' maximum allowable pagefile size so that a fixed size wouldn't cause a problem. This holds true (eliminating fragmentation of the pagefile) even if the dedicated partition is on the same HDD. Eliminating some fragmentation on a HDD never hurts.

In all the time I've been using this setup, I have never had a virtual memory problem, so I continue to setup the pagefile this way. On a 1TB HDD, I won't miss the space; it's just a set it and forget it type of thing.

Windows will always use the pagefile, regardless of the amount of RAM installed on a machine (unless one eliminates the pagefile), to page out the parts of the kernel (and other bits) that are used in the actual launch of the OS, but don't have much further use once the Windows environment is up and running.

For some more exotic manipulations of Windows, visit my website.

 

[whs]

The pagefile performance discussion for systems with 4, 6, 8 or 16GBs of RAM is really useless. Look into Process Monitor > Memory tab. The graph on the bottom right will show you how many hard page faults you will get - practically zero. There is only the odd process that generates a page fault here and there - even if there is plenty of available RAM.

So whether the pagefile is large or small, on this partition or disk or another partition or disk is completely irrelevant. If there are no page faults to start with, there is nothing you can "optimize".