BleepingComputer.com: Unable To Resize Vista Partition Much - Defrag Problem?

I have a Lenovo laptop with 70 GB hard drive and Vista pre-installed on the sole C:/ partition.

And of course I get into all sorts of hardware incompatibility problems with Vista. So I want to make it a dual-install Vista/XP (and maybe stick Ubuntu in there as well). Obviously, I have to repartition first.

Now here's the problem: even though the computer is new and barely had anything on it, it started by saying that 40~50 GB was already occupied. After looking around, it turned out that Lenovo computers do 30 GB back-ups for some reason, and I wasn't the only one experiencing this. So I turn off that particular back-up.

Now, however, it seems that my hard drive looks like this:
- maybe 10 GB of content at the beginning of the disk
- 20-30 GB of blank space in the middle
- and maybe 10 GB more after that

I had tried defragmenting to group everything together, but it turned out that all the programs I've tried don't even bother because apparently the empty space is actually good for system performance.

And Vista now only allows me to shrink by 10 - 15 GB. I would Rather shrink it by 30 GB.

Any clues as to how to get around this? Thanks!

Edit: I've been looking around, and I'm obviously not the only one with this sort of problem. Some people have said that it's a problem of Vista creating snapshots and datafiles left and right. Does this mean that it Is some sort of pseudo-defrag problem? (with the snapshots etc taking space where they don't belong?) Or does it have nothing to do with defrag, and is simply because those snapshots etc somehow manage to occupy the entire tens of GB on everybody's computers?

What tools are you using to resize the Vista partition? There's something preventing you from shrinking the volumes, and I suspect it's Vista deciding what it needs to operate efficiently.

The first step is to figger out what that stuff is that's occupying those sectors of the drive and devise a way to re-locate them. I use Vopt 8 for the defragger on my Vista system (about $40 US). It has a feature where you can right click to find out what files occupy what space.

But, my suggestion would be to create restore disks, then get one of the new 160 - 200 gB laptop hard drives and install that in the Lenovo. Then you'll have plenty of space.

usasma, on Jun 22 2007, 07:48 PM, said:

Thank you very very much!

I was thinking of just using the partitioning program included in Vista, since it's included. I hear that people come across the same problem with several other partition programs such as Partition Magic, so I was hesitating to buy a program for a one-time usage, especially if it doesn't work anyway.

I haven't heard of Vopt before, so thanks for telling me about it! I'll look into it and into the laptop hard drives. Thanks again!

Edit: It seems to be working (finally)! :D The defrag is working, and Vista's in-built partitioner even increased the allowed shrinkable size. Thank you so very much! allow me to hug you!