How to Partition Hard Disk in Vista Ultimate?

Hello to all,
I recently did my first computer build (woohhoo!) with the following components:

Abit KN9 SLI socket AM2 motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 Dual Core 4400+
2gb G Skill PC2-6400 DDR2-800 memory
Seagate 320gb SATA-II HDD
Sparkle GeForce 7300GT 512mb DDR2 video card

My question is this.....I want to partition the hard drive so that I can back up my system on one partition, and use the other to run all my applications. I started out using Partition Magic 8.0 in Windows XP Pro, but have recently upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate, and PM 8.0 is not compatible with Vista. I used Vista Disk Management to partition the drive into two partitions....one basically 290gb and one 30gb, but the 30gb wasn't big enough to back up my system (I need a little over 40gb...figured I'd do 50gb). I tried to make it larger, but now Disk Management won't let me "extend" the volume of the 30gb drive...only "shrink". I messed with it several times and now have basically 30gb for the backup drive, and 20gb "unallocated". How do I get the backup drive up to 50gb, or at the very least, return the unallocated space back to my original drive? Thanks for all your help! I know you guys will come through for me.....you always do! If you need more info, please let me know what you need! Thanks again!

 

Try this Freeware Partition Utility called 'Cute Partition Manager'.
It says it's Vista compatible.

http://www.cutepm.com/index.htm

 

shrink the larger partition.
copy anything you want to save from the smaller to the larger.
Delete the smaller
create a new partition in the now empty space
format.

 

I just tried this....it seems to only allow me to create a new partition up to 29.48gb. Right now it is formatting. When it is finished, I am going to try to see if I can shrink the original partition some more, and extend the new partition up to 50gb, format, and backup the system on it. I'll let you know how it goes, but something tells me that for some reason it's not going to let me do it. I'll let you know!

 

Is the larger partition the first one on the hard drive?
Shrinking a partition only moves the end, not the begining of the partition.
So if your larger one is second it begins 30G into the drive and you have 30G (max) of free space before it, so can't create a larger partition.

You will need to carve out your 50G from the top end of the larger partition, then try to recover the 30G from the bottom end. Not sure if Vista will do the recovery - I will check.

 

You will need to carve out your 50G from the top end of the larger partition, then try to recover the 30G from the bottom end.
Not really sure what you mean by this.....this is what I did....

I went back to square one.....completely removed the partition of approx. 30gb, and extended the volume of the unallocated space from the deleted partition, back into the original C: drive bringing it back up to approx. 300gb. Then, I tried to shrink the C: drive by 50gb to create the partition for the backup (which was becoming the F: drive), but it would only allow me 29.48gb, and as I stated before, to backup my system, I need somewhere in the area of 40+gb. I'm confused:confused

 

Do a disk clean, remove all temp files and then defragment your C drive.

Then try again to shrink the C drive. I would guess that you have something on the drive at 30G from the end. This is preventing further shrinkage.

Are you using Disk Manager from the managemnt console or Diskpart from the command line?

 

Running Defrag right now....

I was using the management console, if that helps.

 

Still nothing....it will not allow me to shrink the C: drive any further, even though there is a whopping 209gb of free space. I don't know what to do at this point except give up....it has me perplexed! :cry