shrinking a partition in vista

[jay75]

i want to make all the data on my partition contiguous so that i can shrink it some more. the data is currently at the beginning of the partition and then there is some free space and then some data at the end which is preventing me from shrinking it further. defragmentation does not solve the problem, therefore could someone please suggest a 3rd party tool for Vista that makes data contiguous.

 

[Nothinman]

The built in shrinking won't work? It's possible that with your data+MFT space you just have too much on there, without seeing the layout it's hard to say.

 

[jay75]

i'm using the auslogic defragmenter(3rd party) for vista. it shows you a visual.

the built in shrinker works fine, but i need to shrink the partition more than it's allowing me to, and from the visual i can see there's lots of space between the 2 blocks of data.

 

[thegorx]

a larger drive is not an option ?
it seems like a better use of time and possibly funds

 

[Nothinman]

the built in shrinker works fine, but i need to shrink the partition more than it's allowing me to, and from the visual i can see there's lots of space between the 2 blocks of data.

If it won't let you make it any smaller there's probably a reason for that and it's probably because of MFT space, something defragging won't help with one bit.

 

[kelleybp]

The program you are looking for is called GParted. It is a non-destructive disk partitioning tool that can shrink a pre-existing partition. I recently used it to shrink my existing Vista partition (the only one on my HDD) so I could dual boot to XP. It's Linux based, so you'll need to download an ISO file and burn it to a CD. Then, boot from the CD and it will load the GParted GUI. This is a GREAT program and TOTALLY FREE! I can't recommend it enough. I don't have a link but if you Google "Gparted" its easy to find. I recommend using the LiveCD option -- that will let you download the ISO as I just described.

 

[Pirotech]

hmm try disk director, on their site there are some tips about its possibility to work with vista.

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Paragon just released Partition Manager 8.5 which is Vista Compatible, and an excellent program (not free, but still relatively cheap.

 

[sonoma1993]

i use acronis Acronis Disk Director Suite 10