Would like to shrink an O/S partition down to as small as possible?

Hi,

I have just bought a Dell Vostro 1400 laptop with Windows Vista Business installed.

The Windows Vista O/S is installed on the C drive and the USEDSPACE is approx 11GB. The C drive itself is approx 100GB. There is a separate RECOVERY partition (D Drive) thats approx 10GB.

What I would like to do is shrink the C drive to say something like 20GB, and create a new partition of around 80GBs.

If I go into computer Management-->Storage-->Disk Management and do a "Shrink Volume" it only allows me to shrink the C drive to approx 50GB.

My first question is why am I only able to shrink down to 50GBytes when the used space isaslow as11GBytes???

My second question is can someone please tell me how I can get the C drive down to 20GBs?... for example is there a piece of software that "moves" the data withina partition before shrinking the partition?

Thanks in advance.

Best Regards

Sharon

 

Answers:



1) Because Vista writes some "unmoveable" files to OS partition (such as the MFT) that prevents it from being resized below that point.

2) Third part products like Acronis Disk Director boot from a CD, outside of Windows, and allow you to not only shrink/expand a volume, but also to move it within unallocated space.