chewearn's blog

Confining oneself to a certain way often resulted in narrowing of view points.

Whenever I supported an interested Windows refugee running into the Ubuntu camp, I easily gave the instruction that the user should de-fragment and then shrink the Windows partition. This will free up space in the harddisk for new partitions, in which Ubuntu can be installed. Little did I realise this simple instruction is not so simple after all.

I have been a constant tinkerer in Ubuntu for a few years now. I do have a Windows Vista laptop, which I used for some tasks not possible in Ubuntu. I avoid tinkering the Vista laptop in fear of breaking it, as I could not afford the downtime.

Consequently, I know very little about tinkering in Vista, despite being a user.

A week ago, I have to travel long distance, and decided to shrink the Windows Vista partition in the laptop (after much deliberation). I wanted to free up some space to store data I need to carry with me. I thought shrinking a partition would be simple, something I could easily do within half an hour in Ubuntu.

But NOOooo! Shrinking the Vista partition is pulling teeth. I am sure expert Vista tinkerer would scoff at my problems and claimed it’s PEBKAC.

I sense a hint of irony here because sometimes I have the same thought when reading the rants about how Ubuntu sucks, hard to use, not able to compete with Windows, blah blah blah.

Well, here was what actually transpired (time/date/figures are approximation).

Many months ago

Shrink the Vista partition to smallest allowed by Vista Disk Management tool. Shrink from 200GB to 150GB.

Day 1, FIGHT!

12:00pm: Tried to shrink below 150GB, not allowed.

12:05pm: Run Defrag (1) partition using Vista built-in Disk Defragmenter.

3:00pm: Tried to shrink below 150GB, not allowed.

3:05pm: Run Defrag (2).

4:00pm: Tried to shrink below 150GB, not allowed.

4:05pm: Scratch head. Vaguely remember Windows has a habit of creating non-movable files all over the place to spite users who dare to shrink partition.

Google is my friend? I already spend too much time on this problem. Found a webpage with instructions on disabling page cache, hibernation, and system restore.

4:20pm: Disable page cache. Reboot (1). Disable hibernation. Reboot (2). Disable system restore. Reboot (3). Run System Cleaner. Reboot (4). Did I overly rebooted?

4:30pm: Run Defrag (3). Leave computer to do errants and eat dinner.

7:00pm: Tried to shrink below 150GB, not allowed. Reboot (5). Tried to shrink below 150GB, not allowed.

Read webpage again. Turned out “pagefile.sys” is not automatically deleted when disabling page cache. Use the overly complicated command line instructions to delete it. Don’t need CLI in Windows? Yeah right. Reboot (6).

7:20pm: Run Defrag (4).

9:00pm: Tried to shrink below 150GB, not allowed.

Gave up for the day. Maybe tomorrow I will be lucky.

What happened to the pretty Disk Defragmenter UI? Gosh, MS decided to dumb it down. Now I can’t see the unmovable blocks, which is the source of the problem.

Day 2, get ready to RUMBLE!

10:00am: Read webpage again. Something about MFT (Master File Table) is also unmovable. Need better defrag tool than the one available in default Vista. I sensed $$$ is to be required soon (what is it about Windows shipped with crippled built-in tools?)

Download two freeware defrag utilities.

10:20am: Run Defrag (5) using Freeware 1.

11:00am: Run Defrag (6) using Freeware 2.

12:00pm: Tried to shrink below 150GB, not allowed. Reboot (7). Tried to shrink below 150GB, not allowed.

Took a break before I ended up chucking the laptop out the window.

1:00pm: Read webpage again. Reluctantly download and install a shareware defrag utility. Accordingly, should be able to fix the problem within a few defrag passes, well before trial period expired. Yeah, I am too cheap to spend on purchasing a shareware.

1:20pm: Run Defrag (7) using Shareware.

2:00pm: Tried to shrink below 150GB, not allowed.

2:20pm: Check settings of Shareware, found something about system files defrag (?); run Defrag (8) using Shareware.

3:00pm: Tried to shrink below 150GB, SUCCESS, finally! That pesky MFT block is finally moved. Minimum size possible 110GB.

3:20pm: Run Defrag (9) using Shareware.

3:00pm: Tried to shrink below 110GB. Minimum size possible 100GB.

3:30pm: Run Defrag (10) using Shareware.

4:00pm: Tried to shrink below 100GB. Minimum size possible 60GB.

4:30pm: Run Defrag (11) using Shareware.

5:00pm: Tried to shrink below 60GB. Finally, reached target 50GB!

Yes, it’s pulling teeth.

5:30pm: Enable page cache. Reboot (8). Enable hibernation. Reboot (9). Enable system restore. Reboot (10). Deja vu, did I overly rebooted?