trying to shrink the volume, but i can only shrink it 19 gigs... i have 100+ avail!!!??

Why is it doing this? I defragmented the drive and cleaned up all the junk files and it is still doing this... can anyone help???

 

You might need to change the disk allocation for both system restore and shadow copies as they take up a good 15% of available disk space.

 

You might also want to try using gparted. It's a lot less problematic than the Windows Disk Manager.

One of the many guides about using gparted:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/using-gparted-to-resize-your-windows-vista-partition/

ISO file download link:

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-live-0.3.7-7.iso?modtime=1215010676&big_mirror=0

 

i deleted all of the shadow copies and system restores before hand, and then defragged to see if I could fix it using jkdefrag... i can't use gparted because I am doing this to install linux. I attached a pic of the two offending "areas"... they are system files so jkdefrag can't move them... anyone know how i can fix this?

 

anybody have any ideas?

 

Yes but unless you turn off system restore Vista still allocates 15% of the total disk that's available.

 

See Gregory's post and try using GParted.

I had the same problem as you, Windows Disk Manager problem. Use GParted to save you the troubles.

 

except that I need to use the windows one so that I can install linux...

 

ok... so i disabled system restore and it looks like it helped a bit, but i still have a bunch of tiny files right near the end of the disk... any new ideas??? i attached a pic of the new analysis

 

Run disk defrag from the command prompt and run it in the admin mode. At the prompt type:

defrag c: -w -v

Run it twice and it should get those small files. That will force a full disk defrag regardless of file size. The defrag program you are running also does an optimization whereas the Windows program won't and just defrags.

 

I think you might be confused about the nature of gparted. Gparted will help you with this no matter what OS you want to install.

In fact, it is actually a linux utility. It's even the primary partitioning tool in some distributions of linux.

For your purpose, you want to use the livecd. You burn the image to a cd and it is bootable. It gives you the option to do any sort of repartitioning you like. In fact, it even gives you the option to use linux, unix or Windows partitioning formatting.

...So it will work perfectly for your purpose.

 

just did that, still have those small files at the end.... any other ideas?

 

except that it won't... i have tried it before and it messes with the windows installation. The ideal way to dual boot is to shrink the volume containing windows using the disk manager in windows. this keeps the installations continuous on the hard disk. The issue right now is that I have a few files that the system is using near the end of the disk, so I only have about 20gb available at the end of the hard disk to actually shrink it by... I would like to use about 30-40.

 

does anyone know of a defragmenting utility that I can boot into and use to defragment the system files that are messing everything up?

 

Ok, concentrating on the defrag then... As far as jkdefrag, did you try the 'force to beginning of disk' option? I did that a few times and it got every file.

(I'll drop it after this, but one last vouch for gparted . It will automatically move any files on the portion of the disk you want to use to an earlier part of the disk. So you don't need to worry about it. However, this is important: The next time booting into Windows it will want to do a chkdsk. Skip it! Otherwise it will attempt to rearrange the disk to the way it last remembered. Once inside Windows it will detect the new partition and ask you to reboot within a few minutes. Reboot & this time allow it to do the chkdsk. If you do this and use the latest version of gparted it will work. I've done exactly the same thing before.)

EDIT:

You could try defraging from a linux live cd. Ubuntu maybe. That should get the files.... The only issue I suppose still might be something to worry about it if Windows will freak out. I'd suggest doing the same skipping chkdsk boot thing I suggested above.