Hello all...am looking for some advice...

I recently installed Vista Ultimate 64 into a brand new self-built pc. The HD is 1TB in size. Vista put some 'unmoveable' files in the middle of the HD, and, of course, I cannot now reduce the size of the C drive down to the size I want it to be, as the C drive must contain the unmoveable files...ho hum...

I would appreciate any input on how I can partition my HD to as many partitions, at any size, that I wish to allocate...

Cheers...

Thank you John...but...there has to be a better way!!...How convoluted can a simple process be...and easy to make mistakes!!
I'm really looking for a program with a simple GUI that will allow me to 'point, press, drag, drop' to manipulate the partitions to how I want them (not how Vista tells me I must have them).
Maybe some of the partition software programs will catch up to Vista 64 soon...

You can use Gparted (Gnome partition manager). It's free, you can stick it on a USB flash drive, and it worked for me. The gui is about as friendly as any partition manager. The only 'catch' is that the drives are named like linux drives (hda1..). but it's easy to figure out.

i had a 5gb "recovery" partition from the factory that i wanted to reclaim. I used Gparted to delete the partition and then move my windows (C partition to the 'front' of the drive. i had to move that partition so i could expand it into the free space (i couldn't expand from the 'front').

Anyway, after doing these operations on my partitions, i rebooted, and i got some error like 'no OS found'. (i expected such a problem.) I just used the Vista CD to repair vista and it worked like a charm.

GParted -- Welcome

Thanks guys,
Yes I agree...it is a very odd place to put the MFT, which is why I would prefer a KNOWN program that would do the partitioning for me...
Sometimes MS excel themselves...why make things difficult, when with a little effort you can make them almost impossible...lol...
Someone has mentioned Partition Manager 9 to me...I'll be looking into that next...

Nope, PM9 is not the program...

Hi Mike,

The only safe way to do what you want is to create your partitions when you install Vista. Simply create 2 partitions, one of which will be your 'C:' partition in which you will install Vista. Use 'Computer Management' (you will need to run this with administrative credentials) to split the other partition as you wish. I would leave the existing drive allocation letters as they are.
Dwarf

Dwarf, thank you for the input...I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I will have to use a combination of Vista with another program...I'll get there...

no Mike, it is a rule of tumb that you should at least use 3 partitions.

One for your "not so good" Vista x64", one for your important stuff (important to you) and one for the "bla-bla" stuff. I myself use 4 partitions, will never ever use only one for the following reasons:

- if your OS needs to be reinstalled, your data stays intact
- you can put your daily used stuff on the OUTSIDE of the disk, right after your OS
- your less important or not daily used data on the INNERSIDE of the disk. So NOT allowing Vista to use the INNERSIDE or slower part of your disk (disks if in Raid)
- only your OS partition needs to be defragged frequently, not your data, so defragging if f.e. using Auslogics will be faster.
- you will have more control of the different partitions and where your stuff is written on the entire disk or raid.

François