shrinking NTFS partitions on Windows laptop

[Steven F. LeBrun]

Paul W. Frields wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 07:38:10PM +0000, Anne Wilson wrote:
>   
>> On Thursday 15 January 2009 18:08:55 Paul W. Frields wrote:
>>     
>>> On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 10:55:05AM -0700, Craig White wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Netbook has arrived (yeah!)
>>>>
>>>> If I boot F10 Live CD, does it have necessary parted/gparted to shrink
>>>> the NTFS partition to make room for F10 or do I have to use like a
>>>> gparted-live CD for that?
>>>>         
>>> No need for a separate parted/gparted with Fedora.  The installer has
>>> a built-in resizing spinner for NTFS file systems, built on the same
>>> modern NTFS utilities, so you can just resize it down and continue
>>> partitioning.  The resizing and partition writing gets done after
>>> you've set things up the way you like.
>>>       
>> I'm not saying anything against gparted or any other such tool, but my natural 
>> caution says use a windows tool to do the windows bit and a linux tool to do 
>> the linux stuff.  That method has never let me down :-)
>>     
>
> Does Windows include a tool that lets you shrink the system partition
> on an installed box?  I know you can't do it while running off that
> system, but what about something on their installation disc?
>
> I certainly wouldn't want to see people think they needed to go buy a
> $40 tool to do something that works perfectly fine with a free one.
> I've tested Anaconda's method myself with plenty of systems I cared
> about and suffered no ill effects, but obviously YMMV.
>
> Paul
>   
I was able to shrink the system NTFS partion using tools found in Vista 
and a third party tool which was either freeware or shareware.  I also 
started with Vista Ultimate.

There is a problem with shrinking the Vista system partition that 
requires many iterations of shrinking.  The disk manager applet in Vista 
(Ultimate) allows you to shrink a partition without losing the data on 
the disk, assuming you do not shrink the disk to a size smaller than the 
data on the partition.  The problem that I hit was that I was only able 
to shrink the partition a few percent at a time because Vista places a 
non-movable file in the partition near the end.  The trick was to shrink 
the partition, move that file, and repeat until you reach the desired size.

While Vista can shrink the system partition down to the size blocked by 
the non-movable system file, it took non-Microsoft defrag utility to 
relocate the "non-movable" file because Vista would not move it and give 
up its system partition size.  It was over half a year ago when I did 
this and I do not remember what third party tool I used.  It was either 
"Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0" or "Power Deframenter-2.0.125".

After repeated application of shrinking, defragging (which caused the 
non-movable file to be relocated), and rebooting cycle, I was able to 
reduce the Vista system partition from 250 GB down to 40 GB.  I can dual 
boot between Fedora and Vista and only use Vista when I really need to.


-- 
  Steven F. LeBrun

Quote:  "Winter meant the coming of the lazy wind, which couldn't be bothered blowing around people and blew right through them instead."
    -- Terry Pratchett, from "Wyrd Sisters"