Low disk space on recovery drive - increase partition?

Try this: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/resize-a-partition-for-free-in-windows-vista/ I hope it helps.

If that has helped, please post back, alerting other users that it was one way to solve the problem.

As doclynn said, expand partition is grey'd out and not available. For that matter, shrink partition is also not available. It's not grey'd out, but if you try it, "space available to shrink" is set to zero.

This sounds like a strange problem. Maybe, you could make another partition just as you said and move everything from D onto the new partition and set it up as the "recovery" drive. I heard Partition Magic might not fix your problem and let's hope you don't have to punt your computer. I'm not entirely sure on this problem, therefore I will wait and see if other users have any other ideas. You can still try my suggestion if you'd like though.

Similiar thing happen to me as well. I remove some space from my C drive to expand the D drive (backup) but the expand functionality stay grey.

 

I decided to delete the D partition. I then create a new partition called D again with the total amont of space. I am happy that I didn't really need anything on the D drive right now.

Hello!

 

D Recovery partition. Well, this partition should only be used for Windows recovery purposes. I hope I understand you right - it must be Vista recovery that came installed by Dell. The contents of the D drive, when you choose to show hidden and system files, are :

 

$RECYCLE.BIN
dell
Program Files
Program Data
sources
System Volume Information
Tools
Users
Windows

 

If you have any additional files or folders, remove those. Some users may also have Boot folder and one more boot*.* file. I don't have any Boot folders or files, and I successfully restored my system when I had registry failure due to Registry Cleaner application.This is everything you need. In case Symantec software uses this partition to backup data, remove all previous backups and create a new partiton (break you C  partition into two), and use the second one for backups.

 

Eugene

 

________________________________

Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium
Dell Inspiron E1705: Centrino Duo Computer
Intel Core Duo T2350 @ 1.866 GHz D-0 (Yonah)
17" WXGA+ Screen by AU Optronics
2 GB RAM at DDR2-533 by Hyundai Electronics
ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 256 MB Graphics Card with Hypermemory
120 GB 5400 RPM Hard Disk Drive M60 Series HM120JI by Samsung
Dell 355 Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR Technology
Intel PRO/Wireless 3945 a/b/g 54 Mbps
Sigmatel High Definition Audio
Sony DVD+-RW with DL Support

Eugene,

 

Thanks very much for your very informative reply.

 

I (temporarily) solved the problem, I believe. I looked at the composition of the disk and found one folder named the same as the computer name. This contained several "backup" folders that contained lots of files and folders. I believe that these are the Symantic backup files.

 

Looking at the dates contained in the folder names I determined that Symantic was saving two backups. Deleting the oldest set regained almost 5MB of room and stopped the low disk space error messages.

 

I'm going to take a look at the Symantic backup settings to see if there's anything there that I can improve upon. :)

 

Thanks very much for you assistance.

 

Chuck

eugene89us

 

If you noticed I mentioned the backup drive (on my computer D drive) not the Recovery partition which is e on my computer....

 

any information on the greyed out expand feature

 

Thanks

Hi Chuck...

I found where the extra backup was coming from on my Vista machine.

It was the Backup and Restore Center located in Control Panel. It must be on by default. I found the same files being backed up to my Recovery partition as well, In a folder with the name of my computer. I spoke with McAfee and asked where their updates are stored, as I don't have Symantec, they told me "only if you create a back up to another drive" all of their updates are located in a folder on the C drive. If you want to check your "hidden" backup from Vista, go to Control Panel, System and Maintenance, Backup and Restore Center, Backup your Computer, then Change Settings.  At that point, you can change the location of your backup to either a different partition, or to a DVD-RW drive.

I hope this helps.

 

Ray