Resizing system partition

[sorcerer]

Got a Toshiba laptop in and the guy said it's running very slowly - and I think I know why. The drive has two partitions, each about 55GB in size - second partition is completely empty, while the system partition has just 200MB free space!

I used D7 to clear out the temp files etc., etc., and managed to reclaim 2GB so I've now got a bit of breathing space to work with and thought that I should now move the usual space hoggers of music, pictures and video over to the D Drive. Unfortunately though, there's hardly any music, pictures or video on it, certainly no more than 600MB in total, so that's not been much help. He doesn't have a great lot of programs installed either, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to just what exactly is taking up all that space.

Scanned with TDSS Killer, Hitman Pro, MBAM and Microsoft Security Essentials and the only things picked up were the 'false positives' from within D7, so I'm fairly confident that there's not masses of malware on there. OS is Vista Home Premium SP1 (there's not been enough room to install SP2 or any other updates by the looks of things).

A 'quick and dirty' workaround would be to resize the partition upwards and that's really why I'm posting - for advice about doing that. I got EaseUS Partition Master 9.1.1 from 'Giveaway of the Day' recently and the program seems easy enough to drive, but the fact is that I've never resized any partition before, let alone a system partition, so (a) is it do-able on a Vista system partition and (b) are there any gotcha's to be aware of?

Cheers folks

 

[Tech in SC]

Try using this to get more info...

http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/

 

[Martyn]

There are plenty of program's that will merge partitions but I would get an image of the drive before you start just in case.

 

[Kitten Kong]

I would run space sniffer, or windirstat to see exactly what is taking up so much space.

Space sniffer can be used from inside d7, great lil prog, and fast too.

 

[sorcerer]

Thanks guys, I'll have a do at your suggestions tomorrow - given the time, that should be today I suppose.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Vista and Windows 7 added partition resizing features built right into Disk Management GUI....you can stretch (or shrink) a partition with a few clicks of the mouse. Easy hand-holding wizard. No need for 3rd party tools, the built in Microsoft tools work wonderfully well.

Can do it via command line since XP/Server03 using Diskpart....also built into the OS.

You only need empty free contiguous space next to the system partition.
So if there's nothing on that second 55 gig partition...blow it away, now you have your free space. Run through the steps.
http://www.petri.co.il/extend-disk-partition-vista-windows-server-2008.htm

 

[sorcerer]

Hmm, well, I imaged the drive and then I thought I'd merge the two partitions to create more space to work in and do updates etc., then find out later just what was taking up the space. Unfortunately, Vista's own inbuilt disk manager wouldn't let me merge the partitions (option greyed out), nor would EaseUS Partition Master, saying it had found "some problem" (but not what) that may result in data loss if I went ahead, so needless to say I cancelled out of it.

As I already have D7 I took Nige's advice to use Space Sniffer, but as I've never used it before I'm not exactly sure about what it's telling me and interpreting the result, so if anyone would care to comment on the two screendumps I've attached I'd appreciate it. First one is the general result and it seems that something called the 'Manifest Cache' is hogging a huge amount. Second one is when I zoom in to that. As you can probably tell, I have no idea what a 'Manifest Cache' is, nor what it does - but it surely seems to eat disk space!

 

[NYJimbo]

There are plenty of program's that will merge partitions but I would get an image of the drive before you start just in case.

+10

I do partition resizes all the time but always clone or image before. I've had a resize go along 100% and then at the last moment something hangs or BSOD's or whatever and you are screwed. That clone or image is peace of mind.

Having said that, EASUS free partition thingy always seems to work if the HD involved is virus free and basically clean.

I do recommend a serious defrag of both partitions and then a reboot before doing the resize, just so the partition software has less wacky stuff to deal with.

 

[NYJimbo]

I have no idea what a 'Manifest Cache' is, nor what it does - but it surely seems to eat disk space!

Google 'Manifest Cache' it will help you decide.

 

[sorcerer]

Google 'Manifest Cache' it will help you decide.

Nope, sorry, that's not helping me at all, with most of it going well over my head

I've found snippets such as:

apparently manifest files are developer files [..] the .manifest file is an XML document that defines the functionality of programs when running on Vista [..] You DON'T want to delete the .manifest files, as they are needed by their associated applications for compatibility/functionality/appearance purposes

so I'll hazard a guess that a 'manifest cache' is where .manifest files are stored and it's not a good idea to delete them. But surely there shouldn't be 29GB-worth of them

 

[phaZed]

I use UBCD with parted magic.

1. Make an image of the drive
2. Load Parted Magic and adjust size/delete partition as needed.
3. Reboot and let Windows try and run... sometimes it will sometimes it won't.
4. If windows fails let it run startup repair on the next run and let it fix the table as it sees fit. Reboot and your done.

 

[sorcerer]

Cheers phaZed, I'll give that a shot.

 

[gikstar]

Is the hard drive free of bad sectors? Curious why you are getting messages when you try to resize the partitions.

 

[sorcerer]

gikstar - yes, the drive is good.

phaZed (Aaron) - thank you, your method worked. I fired up UBCD and loaded Parted Magic but didn't realize that it uses gParted, which I'd used earlier on and failed with. This time though, rather than trying to resize or merge, I actually deleted the second partition, which then allowed me to expand the system partition - job done.

On next startup it automatically ran a disk check and then flawlessly booted into Windows, and is now currently installing service packs and other updates that it didn't have room to do before.

Cheers all

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

This time though, rather than trying to resize or merge, I actually deleted the second partition, which then allowed me to expand the system partition - job done.

That is...what would have worked before by using the built in disk management function...as I mentioned earlier, you must have contiguous unused space on the drive to take space from..else the option is grayed out. So deleting that second unused partition was a step you needed to take, as suggested earlier.

 

[sorcerer]

That is...what would have worked before by using the built in disk management function...as I mentioned earlier, you must have contiguous unused space on the drive to take space from..else the option is grayed out. So deleting that second unused partition was a step you needed to take, as suggested earlier.

Yes, well, a bit of a communication breakdown due to me being semantically-challenged, methinks

I managed to defrag the system partition, which left empty space at the end of it. I also had a completely unused second partition next to that empty space and, as the word 'contiguous' means "touching along the side or boundary; physically adjacent; neighbouring" then I would say that I had "contiguous unused space" to merge the partitions - deleting that second partition is not merging.

Over the years I've created many hundreds of partitions but, once created they've always stayed put - this has been my first ever foray into messing around with partitions so I obviously need to find out more about it

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I managed to defrag the system partition, which left empty space at the end of it. I also had a completely unused second partition next to that empty space and, as the word 'contiguous' means "touching along the side or boundary; physically adjacent; neighbouring" then I would say that I had "contiguous unused space" to merge the partitions - deleting that second partition is not merging.

As far as partitions are concerned...another partition next to the first partition is not considered "free space".
Say you have a 100 gig drive, with an 80 gig C partition and a 20 gig D partition. For the 80 gig C partition, there is no free space contiguous to it. Only after you delete the 20 gig D partition will the 80 gig C partition see contiguous unused space to extend into.

 

[sorcerer]

As far as partitions are concerned...another partition next to the first partition is not considered "free space".
Say you have a 100 gig drive, with an 80 gig C partition and a 20 gig D partition. For the 80 gig C partition, there is no free space contiguous to it. Only after you delete the 20 gig D partition will the 80 gig C partition see contiguous unused space to extend into.

Ah, right, so partitions can't actually be merged then? In your example, say if the C drive was 80GB in size with 60GB used and the D drive was 20GB in size with 10GB used, the two partitions couldn't be merged to make one drive of 100GB in size with 70GB used - you'd have to move the 10GB of data from the D drive, delete D and then extend the C drive to cover the space?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Ah, right, so partitions can't actually be merged then? In your example, say if the C drive was 80GB in size with 60GB used and the D drive was 20GB in size with 10GB used,

I've seen software out there which can claim to do that....especially if there is already software installed on both partitions...it claims to be able to merge them, and re-point the paths to the programs which were installed on the second one. I'd never do that though...seems like it would invite troubles down the road.

If the second partition is blank...I guess I'm just used to doing in the old fashioned way many years ago with DOS boot disks and FDISK....delete unused partition, go on from there.If there is no data on the second partition..I see no reason to invite the potential mess of a "merge"..just blow it away and extend the first one.

I try to always keep things as simple and native to the operating system as possible....without inviting 3rd party butchery tools. I know some people find it trendy to bash Microsoft...but I've found that using the native tools within the OS lead to fewer issues down the road and they work just fine for me.

 

[drpcfix]

I know this post is aging, but I've had partition magic work wonders on XP machines, lots of times..

And on newer stuff, 64bit servers, etc, paragon partition manager has been great for system partitions