Obsideon Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Okay so earlier I decided to shrink my Vista volume to install Windows 7. I have a 250gig HD, and it had 107 gigs free. I made about a 37gig partition I believe by shrinking the volume, and it has now been about an hour and a half, and its still not done. It has the "thinking" circle, when I hover over the disk manager, and I can carry out my normal activities, but I really would like it to finish, because I have thought against it, so I am going to just wait until Windows 7 comes out in October. How long more is it going to take, I am kinda afraid to do a hard reset, so I am going to try and let it finish, but when it is done, expanding it back into the volume won't take this long will it?... Also would it be safe to play WoW, while it is doing this??? I really didn't expect it to take this long. I really appreciate any response I can get. Thanks! -Obsideon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gangsta Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 next time, use GParted - IMHO, it works *much* better. Use GParted to expand the volume - it's really as easy as dragging a slider (well, I dunno if you'd call it a slider, but that's basically what it is) google it (don't have a link on hand) in my exp, it's faster too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ryan Hoffman Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Okay so earlier I decided to shrink my Vista volume to install Windows 7. I have a 250gig HD, and it had 107 gigs free. I made about a 37gig partition I believe by shrinking the volume, and it has now been about an hour and a half, and its still not done. It has the "thinking" circle, when I hover over the disk manager, and I can carry out my normal activities, but I really would like it to finish, because I have thought against it, so I am going to just wait until Windows 7 comes out in October. How long more is it going to take, I am kinda afraid to do a hard reset, so I am going to try and let it finish, but when it is done, expanding it back into the volume won't take this long will it?... Also would it be safe to play WoW, while it is doing this??? I really didn't expect it to take this long. I really appreciate any response I can get. Thanks!-Obsideon *DONT* interrupt it. It may take very long. Resizing may take *hours*! If you interrupt it, you most likely will corrupt your data. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_ehat Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 It's normal for it to take this long. Shrinking the volume requires moving a lot of data around since some data might be located at the end of the partition where the free space is going to be created. Sometimes it's a bit faster than an hour and a half, but it's completely normal for it to take a couple of hours, depending on the size of the partition being reduced and space being freed. You might have anywhere from 15-20 minutes to 1-2 hours or more left. A hard reset is not a good idea at this point. You risk losing data. I'm not sure of the details behind the process--it may move data around with less chance of loss and then make the destructive changes to the partition table once it's done, but it's really not a good idea to do a reset. If it were a process that could be easily stopped, I suppose Microsoft would have added a cancel button. Expanding it back shouldn't take as long, if I remember correctly, since it will just tack on the extra free space to the partition and not have to move anything around. As for playing games, I suppose there's not really anything wrong with it as long as you have enough free space buffer after resizing it that the games won't eat up while playing them (not sure about what WoW does when you play it....) I'd expect a bit of a performance loss if it needs to access the hard drive a lot. Overall probably just best to wait for it to finish and then restart the computer and then expand the partition again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obsideon Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 *DONT* interrupt it. It may take very long. Resizing may take *hours*! If you interrupt it, you most likely will corrupt your data. I changed my power settings so my computer dosen't go to sleep, would it be safe for me to go to bed and let it run over night? Also, am I okay to run a game, or watch a video while it is running? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gangsta Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Yeah, sorry I didn't answer all of your questions (or even any for that matter...) what tim_ehat said. DO NOT hard reset, under any circumstances. You can go to bed and let it run overnight (as I do often). In terms of games, or watching videos, don't do anything that uses the hard drive a lot - the risk of corruption is probably low, but it'll slow things (including the resize) a lot - think trying to copy two sets of files from different places to the same drive. expanding will be quicker, if you don't have to move anything else around. Again, DO NOT interrupt it :) and best of luck. edit: as long as your computer will DEFINITELY not sleep or hibernate or anything - check and make sure in power options; then check and make sure again :p - I've had a catastrophic failure because my laptop decided to hibernate in the middle... :( Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obsideon Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 Yeah, sorry I didn't answer all of your questions (or even any for that matter...)what tim_ehat said. DO NOT hard reset, under any circumstances. You can go to bed and let it run overnight (as I do often). In terms of games, or watching videos, don't do anything that uses the hard drive a lot - the risk of corruption is probably low, but it'll slow things (including the resize) a lot - think trying to copy two sets of files from different places to the same drive. expanding will be quicker, if you don't have to move anything else around. Again, DO NOT interrupt it :) and best of luck. edit: as long as your computer will DEFINITELY not sleep or hibernate or anything - check and make sure in power options; then check and make sure again :p - I've had a catastrophic failure because my laptop decided to hibernate in the middle... :( How long would expanding it take if I didn't move anything around??? Hopefully not the hours it is taking for it to expand? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obsideon Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 (edited) How long would expanding it take if I didn't move anything around??? Hopefully not the hours it is taking for it to expand? Its been almost 10 hours and its still not done... any suggestions?? Edited July 10, 2009 by Obsideon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lars77 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 It might take a while. One time I did some partition resizing using GParted & it literally took all weekend! Still, I'd suggest making sure you don't have other programs running in the background, like anti-virus, they might make things go slower. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obsideon Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 It has been about 13-14 hours, and the drive icon is not flashing much, but its still working??? Is this normal? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boeing 787 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 This is why I always partition a drive before use. Having a 1TB hard drive with 1 partition is just not wise. Easier to backup a 60-GB system partition and restore it if need be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obsideon Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 This is why I always partition a drive before use. Having a 1TB hard drive with 1 partition is just not wise. Easier to backup a 60-GB system partition and restore it if need be. okay but that really did not help me/answer my question at all also, say it did not stop by say saturday afternoon, could I just back up everything to an external pull the plug, stick my windows 7 CD in and start from a clean install? Or would my harddrive be corrupted to the point where I couldn't format it, and I would have to go buy another one? What is the danger of turning it off now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obsideon Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 Okay so i went ahead and closed the window doing the partitioning, and I tried to reopen it, and when it says connecting to virtual disk space, it seems to not load, but after that, I ran check disk on my C:/ drive, and it says there was no errors, and I can post the scan results if needed. Am I okay to restart after I back up my data? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boeing 787 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 The volume shrinking may have gotten stuck somewhere along the line or maybe it didn't really start at all. Back up all your data while you can still access it. Then reboot and see if it's still bootable. After that you can format the drive and start over if you want. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obsideon Posted July 11, 2009 Author Share Posted July 11, 2009 The volume shrinking may have gotten stuck somewhere along the line or maybe it didn't really start at all. Back up all your data while you can still access it. Then reboot and see if it's still bootable. After that you can format the drive and start over if you want. I really appreciate everyone's help, I backed up my data onto an external, and restarted. It all works fine, and went ahead with a Windows 7 upgrade, and it is all working great! Thank you all so much, I really love the support the Neowin community provides! :] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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