Gparted not letting me shrink Vista partition despite free space

allele · 06-23-2009, 11:31 AM

I have a drive with one partition on it. Gparted gives me the option to resize/move it when it's unmounted - but it won't let me shrink it more than 1MiB, despite Vista only (only!) taking up 29GB of the 128GB drive. If I mount it, the option to resize/move is greyed out. The drive is an SSD. I'm using gparted from the system rescue cd, but I've tried it from its own livecd too and the same thing is the case.

What I want to do: shrink Vista (NTFS) partition to 40GB and make a new partition in the rest of the space.

pljvaldez · 06-23-2009, 12:03 PM

I don't have Vista, but I've heard that the built in Vista partition manager will allow you to shrink the partition. In fact, this is the recommended way so that Vista doesn't complain about a resize after the fact.

thorkelljarl · 06-23-2009, 02:49 PM

Vista...

The recommendation to use Vista's own partitioning tool to change its partition size avoids some problems in having Vista boot after you have modified the partition.

If you already have not and it is not too late, and you do not have a Vista CD, make a copy of Vista from your installation. This should be possible after Vista SP1.

Otherwise, if you need a copy of a Vista CD to repair Vista's boot you may legally use any Vista CD you can obtain; any should work.

You might try to change the Vista partition back to what it was before you made any changes and start again. A test that you are there is that Vista boots.

This how-to using Ubuntu as an example might help.

http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vi...rst.htm?page=1

allele · 06-23-2009, 05:13 PM

I did eventually use Vista's tool (after turning off its shadow storage, its hibernation file, crash dumping, and virtual memory, running PerfectDisk multiple times to move special! Windows files from right at the end of the disk ... all this to get around Vista's own limits on how far I could shrink the volume).

I would still like to figure out why gparted isn't working though, because that's a much easier solution if I have to do this again.

Quote:

make a copy of Vista from your installation. This should be possible after Vista SP1

How would I do this? If you see my other thread in this forum I am having trouble with partimage right now.

syg00 · 06-23-2009, 08:36 PM

Can't answer your (gparted) question, but can offer an experience.
On my (then new) laptop, the Vista tool wouldn't resize below 50% of the (320 Gig) disk. After accepting that, gparted took it all the way down to 25 Gig without a peep.

On restart, Vista went through recovery for 45 minutes, but everything works - as I wanted. That was over a year ago.

thorkelljarl · 06-24-2009, 06:37 AM

Once upon a time...

I think I incorrectly stated that it should be possible to burn a copy of Vista from Vista's recovery partition, a feature in the trial release of SP1 but no longer included. Some makers seem to include a procedure for making a CD/DVD copy from the recovery partition; I have seen the feature on a HP system. Some makers might send a CD if you request one and/or pay a fee. Sorry for misleading, but the limitations imposed both by Microsoft and the manufacturers of systems have increased faster than my experience with them.

However, I might make amends if these two links are new to you and prove useful.

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/window...disc-download/

http://apcmag.com/windows_pe_20_a_ti...aintenance.htm

There are reasons we use linux.