36. Shrink A Partition From Within Vista
For the first time a windows operating system is
now capable of shrinking your hard drive partition
without the need for third party software such as
Partition Magic, Acronis Disk Director or Paragon
Partition Manager. These last three software
applications are not redundant however. Windows
Vista's disk management still can't handle
everything that Partition Manager, Acronis Disk
Director or Paragon Partition Manager can, but at
least it is a start.
To shrink a partition proceed as follows:
1/ Click the Start button.
2/ From the Start menu click
Control Panel.
3/ In Control Panel click the
Administrative Tools Icon.
4/ In Administrative Tools click
the Computer Management option.
5/ Because Computer management requires
administrative privileges you may find the the
User Account Control will pop up.
If it does then enter the required information (if
you are not the administrator) or, if you are the
administrator, click the Continue
button.
6/ In the Computer Management
window look at the list of options on the left of
the window. Under Storage you will
see the Disk management. Click on
this option.
7/ When the Disk Management
window opens Right Click on the
partition you want to shrink and,
from the drop down menu click on
the Shrink Volume option.
8/ In the Shrink Volume window
Enter, in the appropriate box, the amount
you want to shrink the partition.
9/ Ensure that the Total
size after shrink is the size you finally
want and then Click the Shrink
button.
10/ Windows will now shrink the partition by the
amount you stipulated.