Expand Vista (C:) Partition Free?

S

Sucka

Gawd
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Mar 7, 2004
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Been running Vista on my laptop for about 2 years now and never had any problems with disk space. Today i got around to doing updates on it and i've run out of disc space. I have absolutely nothing on the C drive except Windows, i have all programs on another partition.

I need to take back some space from the other partition and add it onto the C drive for free. Disk management doesn't allow this for system partitions and i can't afford software for something so easy. Is there a work around to do this in Windows or free software?

My partition size is 18gb, i have system restore off, hibernation off, where the fuck did all my space go on this latest update? I didn't even look what i had before, but it was a few GB.

Any help?
 
in order to use the Vista partition system, your partition next to C (being D or E) has to be deleted and removed, then you can merge space back to C.

so if you could empty your 2nd partition, delete it, you can then add back to C, otherwise software will be needd to do it.

Vista take up about 9G of room on a fresh install alone.

some more is probably taken up from the page file as well.
 
Hmmm, that's not going to work because i have a lot of programs on the D: drive so that would eliminate all the paths and at that point i might as well reformat the entire thing.

I don't understand how Vista is using 18GB without a single program on it. I think my pagefile is 2GB iirc.

I thought some of those pricey partition programs went outside of windows to repartition, am i mistaken?

Thanks.
 
mm
you could download Acronis image, it has a free trial, image your D drive, then clean it off, and then do the move, then reimage your programs back to your drive :) all free, shouldnt take very long.

and you could also reimage your entire rig, so you got a backup of everything anyways :)

Yes, programs like Partitiuon magic and stuff do it on their own, but i used it once and it killed my system, so i dont trust them myself.
 
Ok we're in business.........thanks bud!

Acronis worked great for what i needed to do. Such a simple task, such a pita.......welcome to computer i guess eh.
 
Keep in mind Vista, by default, uses 15% of your disk space to store shadow copies of files (previous file versions) and restore points. If you want to see how much of this space is being taken up, run a command prompt as administrator and type:

vssadmin list shadowstorage

Mine is using the following amount on a 1TB partition:

Used Shadow Copy Storage space: 120.539 GB
Allocated Shadow Copy Storage space: 122.739 GB
Maximum Shadow Copy Storage space: 128.891 GB

There is some good info here on how to change this size:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/76227-system-restore-disk-space.html

If you change the size to something smaller, it will remove the older files/restore points.

Also, you can always run Disk Cleanup to clean up old temporary files, old system dumps, etc.

Now if you want to resize, have a spare drive and want to get tricky.. there's some things you can do in linux with dd, ntfsresize and/or GParted.
 
I may be dead wrong but doesn't vista have the ability to resize partitions?
 
DrDoU said:
I may be dead wrong but doesn't vista have the ability to resize partitions?
Click to expand...

You are not wrong.

First, he needs to shrink his second partition. Vista can do that.

Then, he needs to move the shrunk partition to the right to position the empty space to be adjacent to his Vista partition. Vista cannot do that (move partitions).
That is the problem.

Then, he needs to expand the Vista partition. ...
 
I did try to do it within Vista's own disk management, but it wouldn't let me resize the system partition. I'm sure if i fucked with it long enough i could have got it done, but Acronis took care of it in 5 minutes.
 
you casn only resize the C drive if you have free space directly on the right of the C Drive...

so under computer management, if you go to disk management, you have to have

C | unallocated space | D drive

if you have

C | D | unallocated space |

it wont let you do it,.
 
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