I'm getting confused. I have a new Win7 laptop and I want to shrink the C: drive so I can add a D: partition and I have an immovable file out at 500GB which makes my 1TB drive seem sort of useless. I wanted to end up with a 200GB C: and a 800GB D: but it looks like I'll end up with 2 500GB partitions and a lot of wasted space on C:
 
I went to look at the defrag tool and see that the graphics that show the file blocking are gone. Did Win7 ever have a tool like XP does?
 
Stuff changes so much I always seem to feel like a beginner. :-(
 
 
Thanks.
 
best regards,
mike
 

 Just upgraded to Win 7 64 bit here, but I don't think so. By blocks, you sure you're not thinking of Win 95/98? 
 500 GB unmovable file is pretty huge, not sure win 7 has the option, only defragged a few times, but XP had the option to save a text file that would tell you what files couldn't defrag and give you the size and location. If you are more comfortable working with XP tools, you may be able to find a copy of Bart PE live disk. Boot from the disk and it will give you a virtual XP. I think the Acronis demo might have all you need to get it sorted.
Planning a duel boot?  

It's not 500GB it is just out their at that halfway point.

I found a recommendations to try mini tool bootable cd partition manager.

From my android...

I don't really know, but I wanted to help, so I googled...
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg309169.aspx
 
Is this helpful?
 
 

Thanks Geoff, 

That's the tool I was using to shrink the volume but there is a immovable file that prevents me from shrinking smaller than 500GB.  

The immovable file is likely placed there by the "hibernation" application. 

 If I had the old style defrag tool it would appear as a "red" block. It wouldn't tell me much more but I'd have some sort of representation, then I could turn off functions or try safe mode to see if the immovable file disappeared or actually moved. 

Mini Tool partition manager says it addresses the issue so I guess I'll try that. 

best regards,
mike

Mike, I miss the block representation too. Windows 7, to my knowledge, has never had it.

Thanks.

I guess I was thinking about WinXP.

I am realizing this my first time using Win7 defrag.

Get defraggler (free) which will show the blocks.  Probably one big file though. Get to c drive check the size column and you will see the big files on the root drive. Probably hyberfil or pagefil. You can delete the hyberfil and/or make the pagefil a lot smaller. If that doesn't find it get to the root c drive and do a win7 search for "gigantic" files over the entire disk. You will end up with only 20 or so files and probably easily locate the 500g one. 
John

The unmoveable file may be the Virtual File Management System. If you get up Control Panel ->Device Manager ->Performance Information and Tools -> Advanced Tools -> Adjust the Appearance and Performance of Windows ->Advanced Tab (in that window) , you can set Virtual Memory to zero (not recommended by the OS) and have no virtual memory in your computer while you defrag the harddisk and try to shrink down the volume in Windows.  If you have 6Gb of memory in your computer, Virtual Memory should be around 9Gb using that amount of diskspace or 1.5 times the amount of memory in the computer after doing all of any of the stuff mentioned up above. Of course if you are shrinking your drive, that may also stop you from shrinking it down,  but then perhaps it still may not let you shrink down to the amount you want. But after all of that you should reset the Virtual Memory close to 1.5 times the amount of memory you have in your computer. On my computer my C:\ partition (I have several in the 1Tb harddrive) is set to 280mB of the total 1Tb hardrive. In Windows 7, Defrag does not show any blocks or anything just percent needed to be defragmented on the  drive after doing the Analyse button. (no colored blocks or anything, afterall harddisk drives are way bigger now and those graphics would take more time and memory and make defragging even slower.
 
Virtual Memory is shown as pagefile.sys in the root directory of Explorer (c:\drive partition) and perhaps hiberfil.sys also. (pagefile.sys for sure). After setting Virtual Memory to zero memory there should be no pagefile.sys file in your C:\ root directory (after restarting your computer to set it). After setting Virtual Memory again afterwards there should be a pagefile.sys again after all the changing.
 
Hope that makes sense I am pretty sure it happens that way.
 

Thanks. That all makes sense.
 
Right now I just have the OEM OS on the drive so there is only about 40GB out of 1TB that has been used.
 
I figure it is one of those .sys files just sitting empty waiting for something to happen.
 
My current hope is to use some other system, ideally on a bootable CD to shrink the volume while the .sys files aren't active.
 
best regards,
mike