Shrinking and Extending Partitions on Windows Vista

There comes a time when you need to resize a disk partition on Windows. Most Windows users typically have to use third party software such as Disk Director, Partition Magic, Ranish Partition Manager, or Gparted.

However, downloading and using this disk partitioning software takes time and money. Luckily for Windows Vista users, there is a built-in disk partitioning application on the Vista Disk Management Utility.

There may be many reasons for resizing a Windows volume. One major reason is so that you can install a separate operating system on that hard drive, especially if you do not have enough free space to create a new partition for that operating system. You can instead free up enough space by shrinking the Windows volume, thus allowing you to create a new partition. You may also want to extend a partition when you want to use hard drive space previously occupied by another operating system.

When you resize volumes on Windows Vista, you have to be aware of the fact that you only have the ability to shrink or expand NTFS partitions. Also, when you shrink a partition, page files or shadow copy storage area are not relocated. It is also useful to note that if enough bad clusters are found on the disk, the partition will not be shrunk and you must be logged on as an Administrator to resize Windows volumes.

How to shrink Windows Vista partitions

• Open the Windows Vista Disk Management Tool by clicking on the Start menu on the bottom-left corner of the desktop and then clicking Control Panel.
• Click System and Maintenance on the Control Panel window. On the System and Maintenance window, scroll down to click Administrative Tools.
• Double-click the Computer Management icon and then click the Disk Management icon. From here, you will be presented with many options to format, create, and expand hard drive partitions.
• To shrink a partition, right-click the partition you want to work with and click the Shrink option.
  
• Enter the amount of disk space you want to have after you have shrunk the partition and click Shrink.

You can now close out of the Computer Management Console because you have successfully shrunk your partition.

How to Expand a Partition

Follow the same steps as above to get to the Disk Management utility.

• Open the Windows Vista Disk Management Tool by clicking on the Start menu on the bottom-left corner of the desktop and then clicking Control Panel.
• Click System and Maintenance on the Control Panel window. On the System and Maintenance window, scroll down to click Administrative Tools.
• Double-click the Computer Management icon and then click the Disk Management icon.

From here, you will be presented with many options to format, create, and expand hard drive partitions.

• To extend a partition, right-click the partition you want to work with and click the Extend option. The Extend Volume Wizard should now appear.
• Click Next to proceed to the next screen.
• Select available free space on your hard drives so that you can extend the space of your partition. You can also use space from other hard drives, but this is not recommended because a hardware failure will affect all hard drives on your computer.
• Press Next when you have allocated the amount of space to extend.
• Finish on the confirmation screen after you double-check all of your settings.