Shrink Volume - Create Partition Q

[TVeblen]

I set about creating a new simple volume on a brand new laptop today. You know - they come with one giant C: drive. We want a nice, manageable C: drive for imaging, about 75 - 80GB, but 100 or 125 would do.

Ran up against the "fixed files" limit on shrinking the volume - could only claim 225GB out of 488GB.

I'm wondering- could I (temporarily) turn off the page file, delete all restore points and turn off monitoring, and check for and delete any hibernation files - defrag - and gain some significant ground? Or is a third party partitioning program the only option, as Brink has stated in his tutorials? Has anyone tried this?

(I would like to clean install, but the owner is reluctant.)

Any advice or ideas are welcome.

 

[gregrocker]

Try shrinking again using free Partition Wizard bootable CD to "Resize." Partition Wizard.URL

The tool I use if System files still refuse to budge after defragging, turning off page file, restore points, is Perfect Disk 10 trial version to Offline Defrag>Rightclick on C: drive>Select System Files.

Always back up files and/or a System Image when using a 3rd party partition manager as they can fail during resizing, although we haven't had one fail yet in helping hundreds of these operations here.

 

[TVeblen]

Lemme look into that.
Thanks Greg!

EDIT: So it doesn't move easy, Huh?

 

[LordSnow]

The reason why Windows won’t let you shrink the volume enough is because there are immovable system files at the very end of the volume, as this screenshot from utility shows us. there are multiple things you could try to work this around.
1. Run the Disk Cleanup Wizard, making sure to remove the hibernation file and all restore points.
2. Disable System Restore
3. Disable the pagefile ( Open up System in Control Panel, then Advanced System Settings \ Advanced \ Performance \ Advanced \ Change \ No Paging File.
4. Disable kernel memory dump. In the same Advanced Settings, go to Startup and Recovery \ Settings and then change the Write debugging information drop-down to “None” to disable the kernel memory dump.
5. Disable Hibernation mode in your power options \ advanced power options screen.
Reboot the machine, and then delete your c:\pagefile.sys file, following these instructions if you are having issues.
details about the fix and cause of this problem, also see Shrink Volume beyond Half Its Size