How to resize Vista partition

I have a Vista Home Premium installed in my laptop.
The HD (160 GB) has two partitions:
Partition C: Size: 143.16 GB, Used: 48.08 GB
Partition D: Size: 5.88 GB, Used: 4.52 (HP Recovery partition).
I don't have the Vista OS disc.

I would like to divide the C partition to two partitions, one with 50 GB and the second one with the remaining.
I read previous threads in this chapter. As I understood i have to perform the following steps:
1. Make a back Up of partition C (to be on the safe side, since I don't have the OS disc)
2. Defrag partition C
3. Boot from Disk Director 10 CD.
Choose "Safe Mode", and start DD in "Manual" mode
4. Right click on C partition and choose Resize. Grabbing right side of C and sliding it to the left in order to shrink its size to 50 GB
5. Commit changes (click on the checkered flag) and reboot
6. This will create an uncommitted free space following C
7. Right click on the uncommitted free space partition and choose "Create Partition".
8. Create a primary partition (named E) formatted as NTFS that fills the uncommitted space
9. Choose Commit
10. Right click on the new E partition and choose "Move" to move the E partition to right side of the D one
11. Choose Commit

Question:
Since the used space of partition C is now 48 GB, resizing it to 50 (before moving files to the new built one) will not be "too tight"?
Anything else do I have to consider?

Thanks

 

samy:

I think 50 GB is too tight. You need to consider that more space may be needed in the future for Windows Updates, expanding log files, and Vista's Restore Points/Shadow Copy files. The latter are written to the disk daily as a backup mechanism. By default Vista reserves 15% of the partition for these files (although you can change this manually from a command prompt). Also, Windows defragmenter wants to have 15% of the drive free in order to do defragmentation. Putting all this together may give you a better estimate of how much free space you should leave on the C: partition. I would suggest closer to 50%, meaning that you should probably resize C: to about 70 GB (unless you plan to move some of the files on C: to your new partition).

On your step 10, I probably wouldn't do that. If the manufacturer set up the machine with the recovery partition at the end of the drive then I'd probably leave it there. You can swap drive letters between D and E using Vista Disk Management Console if you'd prefer your new partition to be D:

 

Kolo, many thanks for your prompt and complete answer.

1. For the partition C size, you are right, 70 Gb will leave enough space to install additional programs and for disk defragmentation to ran with no constraints.
2. On the partition D the manufacturer "Restore System" to the original factory state is installed. It is activated by restarting the computer and pressing the "f11" button.
I would like to change the partition name, and to leave it at the end of the drive. Do the name change has any impact on the recovery process?

I am actually checking programs Acronis TI and ShadowProtect before opting soon for one of them. Having a "good" backup program, may I cancel the existing partition D ?

thanks

 

Probably not. Just try it and see. If it doesn't work, change the name back.

Exactly. You aren't likely to need the recovery partition very often, and it is just consuming disk space. Many of us make a backup of the recovery partition and put it away for safe keeping. If you sell your PC then you can restore the partition and use it to return the PC to factory condition.

A good imaging program like TI is more useful than a recovery partition because you can save your current installation with all of your files, programs, and settings. Factory recovery partitions will recover the OS but then you have a lot of work to do reinstalling programs, changing settings, etc.

 

Many thanks for your time and your kind guidance.
I will try the mod very soon.
I am trying doing it "slowly and surely" since I am "learning" using Vista on my new laptop which I purchased very recently after working with XP on my older one (which I gave to my son) for more than 5 years.
All your answers to all the threads in this forum are a real good tutorial.

Thanks a lot.