Shrinking OS boot volume

bonzodog2 · 2014-05-15 10:22:18

I have a 160GB HDD running Vista, that I want to make a backup image of. I've moved all my files off the disk, defragged etc. Now I want to shrink the volume, so a backup could be restored to a smaller disk. How safe is it to shrink the volume of the running OS? The defrag has put all the files at the end of the disk, and…

15-05-2014 10:22AM

#1

bonzodog2

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I have a 160GB HDD running Vista, that I want to make a backup image of. I've moved all my files off the disk, defragged etc. Now I want to shrink the volume, so a backup could be restored to a smaller disk.

How safe is it to shrink the volume of the running OS? The defrag has put all the files at the end of the disk, and the pagefile.sys and some parts of the SystemInformation folder are above the size I'd like to shrink to.

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#2 15-05-2014 11:47AM

Monotype

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So long as you are using Windows' built in shrink tool, there shouldn't be any issue.
Sometimes the defragmentor isn't great, so run it five or six times can get a better result.

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#3 15-05-2014 01:38PM

bonzodog2

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Not quite as straightforward as it should be, but http://builtvisible.com/how-to-resize-a-windows-vista-partition/ helped, for the benefit of others looking to shrink. All done and restarted now with a smaller C:

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