move files at end of HDD to front?

well ive tried 3 different defrag programs (perfectdisk, auslogics, and powerdefrag) and so far none of them have been able to completely do the job.

basically what im trying to do is get them all closer together so i can free up some space to make another partition for linux. anyone know how i can do that? (im using vista)

 

Backup your work, then do clean install then create partitions.

 

just did a clean install using the recovery cd last night

 

Try Ultimate Defrag. I think this is an excellent defrag prog, and it has options to variously arrange your files.

http://www.disktrix.com/UDDescription.htm

 

Oh after the clean install it asks your about which partition you want to install vista on thats when you can create a new partition there are options there. If you have your vista box theres a guide to it in there.

 

mine came preinstalled on my computer, so i dont have the box. but after the recovery there are three options, if i remember correctly they are:

1: recover to entire HD (the one i chose)
2: recover with two partitions
3: recover with two partitions but only install vista on the first one

i would really like to avoid doing that again though, the process is quite long to get all my files and stuff back on...

o yeah, and im trying ultimate defrag soon as it downloads

edit: ultimate defrag costs money :'( im tight for cash now that i bought this laptop, so i gotta avoid spending if at all possible..

im guna try restoring with option 3 (not actually restore, but see if it has an option that allows you to chose the size of the partitions)

edit2: option 3 doesnt allow you to set sizes

 

Oh you have recovery disk but not vista disk?

 

that is correct

i attached a picture of what my harddrive looks like (where the files are located) in the first post incase you would like to see

 

Ah sorry no idea then not an expert on partitions as it is, I thought you had the vista cd all this time.

 

o, no, but thanks for trying. it seems there are quite a few people having this problem on the net, a few of them have solved their problems but i havent been able to.

i tried following this guide http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...ink-volume-inadequacy-problems/#comment-21103

it worked for a few people, but not me...

 

All I found was this its for a toshiba laptop no idea if it will help you. Good luck!

http://forums.computers.toshiba-europe.com/jive3/thread.jspa?threadID=4462&messageID=14518

 

thanks but thats not guna work, its dated 2005

i think im just going to have to go ahead with the linux installation the way my computer is, and hope i got enough room

 

Try shouting ALAKAZAM! That doesn't work I have no more ideas. sorry about the link didn't check the date. How did you acquire vista? You can maybe call microsoft for an upgrade disk to your version of vista if you have your registration key. They should ship that out to you for free. With that I know its easy pz to do.

 

I think gparted will do the trick. Double-check the documentation.

 

tried diskkeeper?

 

gparted WILL work
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

so will these

Partition logic
http://partitionlogic.org.uk/

Ranish partition manager
http://www.ranish.com/part/

 

I am sorry, I should have noted that the above will (for free) RESIZE your partition....they are not just for moving the mft.

They will move the MFT during resizing

 

the MFT is outa the way, there are other files there though (i do beleive system files) there is a guide on using Gparted in this situation but you need to have the actual cds for vista (because it will overwrite the system files and you need to recover)

but, i think i have enough space for linux thanks for the replies though this is turning out to be more trouble than i thought it was going to be (worked on it for about 7 hours today )

 

Windows doesn't deal well with low disk space. If you can't get enough space for Linux with standard defrag tools, you should either back-up some data and delete it, or just not try to install Linux. You should always have ~15% (or more) of your drive free under Windows for defragging and random file operations. If you can't manage that and having a partition large enough for Linux, then get a larger drive, delete/archive/compress some files, or just don't worry about using Linux on that machine.

 

i got a 160GB drive, i got lots of space. I was trying to get vista down to 70GB but i got it down to 81ish so thats guna be close enough i think. I just thought that id never use the space on windows but i might have alot of stuff under linux because it will be my main OS other than gaming.

 

Games take a lot more space than do most data files. Also, using the ntfs-3g driver, you can mount NTFS partitions in read/write mode perfectly safely. I'd recommend making your Windows partition about 100-120GB to allow for new games to be installed, and then leave the 40-60GB or so for Linux. Windows is much more disk-space hungry than Linux.