pb with partitioning vista

[andra]

Here is my problem. Just bought a Dell laptop, with a Vista installed on it and many other programs that I am not sure I'll ever need. But, anyway, I currently have :
- 94mb - no idea what for
- 10.00 gb - a so called recovery
- 73.09gb - system partition
- 2.50gb - no idea what for
- 63.36 - unallocated (i shrinked the system partition).

Now, what I want to do is have :
- 70 gb - not the system partition, only for music
- 60 gb - docs, etc
- 30 gb - for the system, on which i want to have only vista and other programmes, that i can format whenever I want;

The problem is I cannot shrink the system partition any more. When I right click on it in disk management, the size of available shrink space is 0. on the bottom I have a note saying 'the size of available shrink space can be restricted is snapshots or pagefiles are enabled on the volume'.

Furthertmore, I cannot currently allocate a simple volume to the 63.36 unallocated space because it tells me: 'There is not enough space available on the disk to complete this operation'. How can that be? It's 63gb! Is is possible that vista has a restricted no of primary partitions and I already have four?

What should I do to obtain the space I want? Would it be easier to format the system and make the partitions how I want them to be? But, what if I will be stuck with the mystery ones (the 94mb, 2,5gb and 10.00gb) again?

Please, if you can help me, I would be so greatful. My computer knowledge is very restricted, so, please, the advice should be written for dummies. I have never posted another thread on a forum before, but Vista is getting to me! I just hate it!!

Btw, if I format my laptop and install windows xp on it, will it have any problems with current hardware, like, say, not recognise the video card etc?

Thanks so much guys for reading this, hope you can help!

[mjc]

The recovery partition is probably where your restore image and other things like drivers reside. If you have the option to make a set of recovery disks, do so before even thinking about touching that partition.

The 94 MB...don't worry about that, unless you want to wipe the entire drive and start over the partitioning from scratch, even then you will probably have a few odd MBs here or there, unless you do simple percentage based partitions (divide the drive in half by using the 50% option when partitioning...or something similar).

If you have the option to turn off Hibernation, do so, as that tends to take up as much disk space as you have installed RAM. Also, manually set a minimum size Pagefile. Whatever Vista does for System restore should be able to be minimized, also...do that, keeping the latest restore point. That should allow you to shrink the system partition some more.

The 2.5 GB is probably a Dell thing...diagnostics and such.

[Paul Komski]

Does THIS THREAD (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?p=391721#post391721) look similar?

I think you will find that the small 94MB partition is the Dell Diagnostics partition and the Recovery partition is an area that Vista reserves for you to make image files of your own using Vista's software. The 2.5gig partition is probably a restore (as opposed to a recovery area) partition which can reset Vista back to factory condition as long as you do nothing to change the MBR (http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/). It can be worth making a backup of the MBR just in case because Goodells method or rebuilding the Dell one is not a simple affair.

Vista is very controlling about how much you can shrink the system partition using its own disk management - it is in control and not the user. Vista also does a number of weird things with the metadata on all partitions that it creates.

If going for WinXP do check beforehand that Dell does provide Drivers for XP for your model.

[andra]

Thanks guys so much!

I tried doing some things you said, but could not make the partitions I wanted. Vista is too controlling! Anyways, I decided to format the system, deleted all the partitions and had the entire space unallocated when installing Vista all over again.

I made sure I have all the drivers for my laptop before that. But Dell does not offer any drivers for XP, only for Vista, which is a bit monopoly...hmmmm.

Plus, in my old Dell, with XP on it, I never had to install any drivers, just because XP was too smart. Vista takes an enormous amount of space and is completely useless. I am very dissapponinted with it.

In the end, I got everything going again, with the partitions I wanted and no programmes, so I can install what I want.

So, thanks again for the quick responses.

The end :)