Partitioning drives after install ?

One of the other computer techs where I work suggested Partition Magic, but I was wondering what you all suggest on partitioning hard drives on a Vista computer. I bought my Vista machine with the OS already installed.

Acer setup the 320 gig hard drive with 2 partitions, about equal in size.

Since I have an external hard drive, and plenty of dvds, to use as backups, I really have no need of a 145 gig partition that is going unused.

So I would like to shrink the second partition down to about 30 gigs and give the rest of the room to my main partition.

What are your suggestions ?

Thanks !

Hi Jim,

Follow the instructions in these Tutorials:

Firstly, to extend your current C drive so that it occupies the full physical capacity of the hard disk:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/95418-disk-management-delete-extend.html

Secondly, to shrink the C partition and create D. As mentioned, you can select whatever size you want, upto the maximum space available for the new partition. Since you are thinking of 30GB, then the figure here would be 30720 (image taken from Tutorial).

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/95398-disk-management-shrink-partition.html

Sorry for the bump. I forgot this was here...

I haven't tried this yet. I did find out that Parttion Magic doesn't work on Vista. Development stopped on Partition Magic in 2003.

Partition Commander was suggested to me by another computer tech at work.

With vista you don't have to use any applications.

Vista has a fully capable partition manager (disk manager actually) itself.

Allows you to resize, shrink, add, delete, change and format new/old partitions on your harddrives.

Keep in mind though it is a good idea to DEFRAGMENT your harddrive before doing this or otherwise you might not be able to shrink it due to data being too close to the edge!

Another thing I recommend before initiating any partitioning would be to DISABLE windows system recovery so that it removes all old recovery files. These files take up LOTS and LOTS of space at random on your harddrive and can be quite annoying for any partitioning. Naturally you can re-enable it again after you are done.

NOTE OF WARNING!:
Using any and all partitioning software other than vistas fully capable built-in disk manager IS NOT ADVISED. I have found A LOT of cases where people have messed up their harddrive/files by trying to use a 3rd party application.
I used partition magic before in XP and I loved it.. but trust me on this, in vista you're much better and safer off just sticking to the Vista disk manager.

For instructions on how to use vista's built in partition manager read Dwarf's post, that about sums up what you need to know.

Good luck!