Windows Vista Partition after install

I installed Vista on a Maxtor 200gb drive but only have the one partition Vista is installed on. Is there a way to make another partition on the drive now or is it too late?

 

Disk Management in Vista can now resize partitions both up and down. Right click on the Vista partition and choose the option to "˜Shrink Volume….’ and enter the size you want to shrink it by.

 

No doubt it is very limited Arie and I’ve only tried it a few times. Works well when it can do it, but not much use for the partitioning I do. I’m sure it won’t let you move the starting point of a partition on a hard drive, but then you definitely wouldn’t want to move the start of a Vista partition anyway as bootmgr and BCD use the partition offset to locate partitions, where as ntldr and boot.ini just used the partition numbers as seen by the partition table.

It will be most useful for shrinking the Vista partition to allow the creation of a data partition. So no excuse now for people keeping everything inside Windows.

 

When I tried the Shrink Volume I got a box to come up with options on the size to shrink it too. Here is what is said:


Total size before shrink in MB - 194474

Size of available shrink space in MB - 90543

Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB - 90543 (I can change this to any amount I need)

Total size after shrink in MB - 103931


I only want to put one other partition on my drive so it is split in half. If I use these default numbers, do they look right to you?

 

Those numbers will make Vista just over 100gigs and give you 90gigs of free space for your second partition. If you want to reclaim more space it may require moving files in Vista so they are not on the part of the partition you want to reclaim. Most likely it will be the swap file, but I don’t know how you would see this in Vista as the Disk Defragmenter does not give the useful map it used to in XP. Does anyone know how to see such details in Vista?

 

Hi McTavish,

Don't bet on it http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=61911

Hello Mindcrime,

IMO, shouldn't be split evenly.

You have what looks to be a 200 GB drive.

The split should be 30, maybe 40 GB for the OS. The rest of the space should be used for documents - media files and all other user files.

If you have to repair/reload the OS, user files will remain untouched.

Imaging becomes easier and quicker as well.

I think you're dual booting and the other OS will have access and will be able to use this "data" partition" as well w/o getting tangled up with Vista.

I don't know what the size of the other drive is, but that should be set up the same way.

If you have two drives, then the partition that an OS accesses for data should be on the opposite drive. One system file that is highly recommended to be located on another drive is the page file. Its more efficient because of the disk arm movements - faster to move the opposite disk's read head than to reposition the OS disk's read head.

So the new partition that you set up on the Maxtor should be the data partition for the XP OS.

Regards - Charles

 

Hi McTavish,

No I don't know how to yet other than to see it from the dual booted XP.

I setup the Vista partition prior to the install. After the install moved the swap (page) file to a partition on drive 0 - Vista is on drive 1.

Regards - Charles

 

I tried to make the C drive only 40 GB but it won't let me. When I tried to make the number here... (Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB - 90543)bigger so the C drive would be smaller it won't work. I can make the number smaller but it is making the C drive larger. I guess since it says...(Size of available shrink space in MB - 90543) that is the smallest I can make my C drive. I will have C drive at 103 GB and the new partition at 90 GB. That should be ok right?

 

Hi Mindcrime,

It'll work, its just not ideal


Or you can start all over again using the Disk Management console to:

From XP delete the 200 GB partition on the Maxtor - the 2nd drive.

Create two partitions - 40/160 ratio - from the now un allocated space and then re install Vista the way you did the first time to the first partition.

I know I posted in your dual boot thread in the XP section that Disk Management can't create partitions, but surferdude2 pointed out that is not true. I know this works because I've tried it.

What you can't do is re size a partition with XP's Disk Mangement console.

Regards - Charles