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And then there was vista...
... being above the age of 15 I'm more than a little sceptical about vista and it's enhancements. But today I found my first real improvement. Well I thought I had! I found that there is a partition tool which allows you to repartition etc in vista, on the fly. Woohoo I thought no need for partition magic or reconfiguring my system.
So here I am trying to use the Computer Management option to extend one of my existing partitions. I want to extend the recovery section. Dell had set this to 10GB, a somewhat strange thing to-do on a 230GB HD but hey I can change that with Vista's cool Computer Management. However I can't. The distructions for vista say I should simply be able to click on a partition and shrink it. That works fine. Then I should be able to extend the other partition by simply right clicking and selecting extend. Oh no but I can't the option is grayed out!! I've goggled the problem but don't seem to be able to find an answer. So Here's problem the only way I can create a partition large enough for my back ups is to take all the space from my working drive, then I'm left with a random 10GB which can't be added to anything. So I started with an OS drive of 220GB and a restore drive of 10GB. Now I have a restore drive of 10GB - which is pointless, an os drive of 150 GB and restore drive of 70GB. This is pants and another nail in vista's coffin - in my eyes at any rate.
In addition I've noticed that I can't shrink all of the free volume of a disk.
Has anyone out there come across this problem before? Has anyone got ideas besides on how I can partitions in the sizes I the lowly user would like without a full reinstallation?
- You have discovered the limitations of the Vista partition software.Yes you can only shrink the C partition by 50% max, no matter how large the partition is. No one knows why.To extend a volume, you first must have "unallocated" space available before extend option is available.Remember in Windows you are limited to 4 basic partitions on a physical drive.
- Well the deal is over now, but yesterday, for the black friday sale, at Circuit City I got a 500 GB External Hard Drive for $79.99, but I saw an 80 GB external for $89.99 and a 320 GB for $129.99, probably has cheaper ones at Best Buy, depending on your area I guess...
- bummer! the only reason for the recovery partition is so that you can reinstall vista. I've always thought it best to hide this partition, because it causes so much confusion....the real answer to your problem is to go to DELL, and buy APICORNS 2.5 inch backup/restore solution, and make an image of your entire hard drive, including the mbr, c drive, and restore partition. from that point on just make images of your c drive...I understand this does not answer your base question, but I am sure you understand that using the same hard drive for your backups is not a good idea, lose your hard drive, lose your backup...having a 2.2" external hard drive in your notebook case means you can replace or do a low level format on your hard drive, and be back up and running with little to no lost data right away, depending on how often you back up, daily is not too often....back to your question now symantec's program has set the restore partition to x% of your hard drive in your case that is 10GB and you are stuck with it unless you delete it...you can create another partition by shrinking your c drive and then creating a new partition in the unallocated space you have just created. the reason I mentioned Apricorn is because their EZ GIG II software blows GHOST right out of the water IMOHO .....good luck!
Firstly many thanks for the comments... confirming my thoughts and scepticism on vista is always reassuring if not a tad repetitive that another MS OS goes by eating ram like a alcoholic drinks whisky whilst similarly increasing its inability to function!
So the only way I can get my space back is to reformat my HD. hmmm well I'll have to do it at some point, at least I know the task in hand. Regarding the recovery partition - do you really need this reinstall vista? What exactly do you mean by this? The reason I ask is that I blew it away last night :D.
Regarding the repartition tool – I’ve found the limitations? This is an understatement - it’s total pants. Firstly I can’t shrink a drive by 50% - more like 15%. Then if I shrink a drive I can only do two things with the space. Allocate it to a new partition or allocate it to the original partition. Does any one know if Billy boy is going to get this to work in a new SP any time soon? As I said it’s the only potentially useful functional tool I’ve found in vista to date.
I have an external HD which I backup on - it's just that I'm temporarily using it for something else at the moment and was looking for a short term solution - hence my quest to make a backup partition on the OS HD. I know this isn't v sensible but needs must when the devil calls.
On a slightly different topic, does anyone have any pointers at making a dual boot system with vista? I get a feeling I should try Linux, but don’t want to swap all in one go.
Thanks Pete.
PS I’m in the UK so don’t get the joy of such cheap deals – although with the USD going ga-ga I hope to be visiting shortly to fill my suit case.
- let me ask you this, have you thought about renaming your c:drive e:, and then installing VISTA to your d: drive, then after restarting from your d: drive renaming it c:, then partitioning your e:drive into d: and e: and formating them??? After all you said you blew away your recovery image, and I just thought you might want to play around a little?...If you need more space to install more programs than your 10GB partition will hold when you install them VISTA should install a short cut to them if you create a directory called program files on your then d:drive. I would be very curious to know if you can do this since I haven't tried this since windows 98SE which worked very well.
- I think you are saying the d: partition has to become c: before you install the os. that would be the best, no doubt about it. I was just wondering if you think the rest of the experiment is sound? I put XP on my laptop, tweaked the registry and all just long enough to grab an image, you never know when a client will show up with the same notebook wanting XP, and having an image can speed up the whole process. Now I'm ready to go back to VISTA, since I like very much, and I guess I can just run my own experiment. Inquiring minds want to know, or at least mine does.
- "tweaked the registry and all just long enough to grab an image, you never know when a client will show up with the same notebook wanting XP, and having an image can speed up the whole process"Two potential problems with doing this.1. They will have the same product key and the cloned drives will not activate with Microsoft. Its called unintentional software piracy.2. If they (PC's with the same image) are going to be on the same network domain, there will be problems also, they will have the same SID, and this will cause big problems on a network.
- not really a problem, just grab the oem copy the customer has to pay for change the key in the registry stick the coa on the bottom of the computer place his copy of xp on the keyboard and close the lid, one properly licensed computer. I never send a computer out the door without the disk. I just save myself a little time tweaking the registry, and because I do those tweaks I have a customer that knows he can depend on me. no problem with the network, that computer is going home with him, and many times the network name, user name and sometimes even the users password is there. they take it home turn it on and go straight to work, instant access. you shouldn't be surprised how much people love that. this is just one of the advantages of MICROSOFT'S BUY LOCALLY PROGRAM.
discostu668
474 Posts
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Posted November 24th, 2007 19:00
problem solved.