It is always better to keep your personal files (photos, music, letters
etc.) on a different partition than the system drive/partition.

1. Defrag your system partition

2. Image your system partition to an external drive

3. Shrink the system partition

4. Create one, or more new partitions in the unallocated space you free up
by shrinking the system partition.

5. Move all of your personal files to partition D:, or whatever partition
you just created. Empty the recycle bin.

6. Defrag the system partition again. Remember, you just copied, and then
deleted, your personal files from the system partition - leaving a lot of
holes.

7. Create a new image (and verify same) of the system partition and save the
image (temporarily) on one of your new partitions.

8. Once satisfied that the new image is competent, you can now delete the
original image from your external drive

9. Create a new image (without your personal files) of the system partition
on your external drive

10. Now you can delete the temporary image you have stored on your newly
created partition

For the record, I archive all of my images on an external drive. I keep the
last known good working image on an internal hard drive. I update this image
constantly, when the system is in a known good condition. I then copy the
image to the external drive so as to have the latest image in two different
locations, one for convenience - one for safety.


--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!


"formerprof" <formerprof******NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:013F490A-09E1-4B47-BB63-95B05C7D6B68@microsoft.com...[color=blue]
>I have Vista Ultimate installed on a 300 gb hard disk. About 65 gb are used
>and the remainder is free. Is there any reason why I can't boot Acronis
>Disk Director from CD and take, say, 80 or 100 gb for a second partition?
>
> In the alternative I could "Ghost" the existing partition with True Image
> 10 and then repartition the drive 200/100. I know that Acronis claims to
> be able to shrink an imaged partition into a smaller space on restoration.
>
> I'd like to do this and avoid the necessity of doing a complete fresh
> install. All assistance gratefully received.
>
>
> formerprof
>
> PS Everything is backed up, my license is legit, I love/hate
> Windows/Linux, think that Bill Gates should be jailed/decorated and
> brushed my teeth this morning.
>[/color]