about the disk management in vista

[rbi]

I tried it last night and shrank 18GB out of my 85GB remaining in my laptop(totally 120GB). Then I got 65GB left and couldn't use it to shrink further. Any suggestion? Do I really have to pay $50 to buy one time use 3rd party partition software?

[SHoTTa35]

well there are partition programs out there that you can demo. 90% of the time you'll only need it once so you can just download it, use it then uninstall it. You don't need to keep it installed to keep your changes when you reboot (obviously)

[rbi]

well there are partition programs out there that you can demo. 90% of the time you'll only need it once so you can just download it, use it then uninstall it. You don't need to keep it installed to keep your changes when you reboot (obviously)

Any example for VISTA? I don't want Gparted first. For Acronis, they only allow 7MB???

[arni]

The main problem with Vista disc management is that if you have files spread around the disk you will only be able to shrink the partition to that point at which the last file is stored because it shrinks from the end.

Try defragmenting your disc and after once again to shrink the partition. You are out of luck if some of the write protected system files like paging file, system restore and other are at such locations.

Another alternative would be to get the ultimate boot cd http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ or use a live linux cd with gparted like this one http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php.