Disk Partitioning & Vista

alanrowell

I have a 500GB hard drive with Vista installed on it. I want to split it into separate volumes using the Disk Management facility in Vista. However it will only allow me to shrink the C: drive to 287.04GB.

Any ideas on how I can get round this and make my C: a sensible size?

hawkwind

would suggest you try partitioning first with GParted
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/

alanrowell

It requires downloading one of 2 files (it doesn't say which), burning a CD then booting up using that CD, then after altering the partition size it requires me to use my Vista disk to repair the installation.

Why does this process not fill me with confidence?

What I want is to find out WHY I can't use the in built tools to split my drive in a sensible manner

Chippy_Minton

Should be simple, according to How to resize a partition in Windows Vista. Also a link there if it doesn't work with the standard tools.

bat999

Hi
I've found a how-to.

Maybe read through it and see if you've overlooked something.

Here:-http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/story78111.html

ps The gparted is a good piece of kit, I've used it when setting up Ubuntu partitions, but I agree that you shouldn't need to use it as Vista has the Disk Management Console thingy fitted.
:cool:

pps Chippy Minton beat me to it!

bobdauilda

errr what are the advantages of disk partitioning please?

BillScarab

You can install a second OS in the other partition so you can then dual boot your system. So you could have Windows and Linux and choose which one you want to run when you boot your PC. I used to o it with Ubuntu Linux and XP.

Other than that I don't think there's much point nowadays for everyday PC use. Some people like to have the OS on one partition and all the programs on another.

A_Clock

bobdauilda wrote: »

errr what are the advantages of disk partitioning please?

I use it to keep my games on one, music on another etc

bobdauilda

thanks, is there an easy online guide on how to do it with xp ?

superscaper

As Billscarab said there's not much point in partitioning unless you're going to have more than one operating system. There's no speed difference and as for organising there's no difference to just having folders. Also it doesn't save you from disaster, if your hard drive fails for any reason then you lose all your partitions. So I can't see why anyone would want to partition, more hassle than it's worth.

alanrowell

Chippy_Minton wrote: »

Should be simple

I've tried the 2 official ways to repartition using vista and they all give the same result - I cannot have the C: drive smaller than 287.04GB. If I want a C: drive between that & 500GB it is simple, but if I want it to be a reasonable size like 50GB Vista refuses to do it.

it appears to be linked to page files, system restore files and where Vista puts programs on the hard drive, so I suspect it might be a "feature" of Vista

I'm wondering if the best option is to reinstall Vista especially as it hasn't been registered yet & there's no data for me to lose

As for why I want separate partitions on the same drive - it's so that if I have to do a reinstall of Vista it just reformats the C: drive rather than the whole disk and hence I don't lose all my data.