unmovable files and gparted. is it dangerous?

[shmu]

I have 90 gb of files on my primary partition, but I can't shrink it down to less than 150 gb.
(I want to clone it on to a SSD that is 120 gb.)

So, I tried turning off all sorts of window services like hibernate and page file and kernel memory and indexing .
And I tried some defragmenters, and the Easeus partition master.
But I can't get it down to 120gb.
I assume I have some unmovable system files spread out on the partition.

What if I try shrinking it with Gparted? Will it work? And will it ruin my windows installation, or can I get it booting again with a recovery disk?

I know -- only shrink from the right, not from the left. And leave some empty space, like 25 gb should probably be enough.

and make a system image, just in case.

anything else to be careful about? what do you guys say?

 

[Cliff S]

Have you tried a 3rd party defragmenter in safe(condensing empty space) mode with all the other stuff turned off and put your data files on an USB HDD if a second internal HDD? If the 150GB is not "Full" and it's fragmented free space you could look into Migration software like AOMEI Partition Assistant. your specs state you have a desktop so you must have an extra SATA cable inside.

Also one more thing I see in the threads, when you get your SSD up and running switch the SATA cable out to the one from the HDD and leave the HDD unplugged until you can reformat and partition it(you cannot have 2 boot disk of the same OS (Clones) and have the system run properly). A lot of people forget this.

Or the best over all would be a clean install, then import your library files after. Do not forget to set BIOS/UEFI to AHCI

 

[shmu]

Is the following correct?

[h=3]EaseUS Customer Service Department[/h]	3:41 AM (10 hours ago)		Reply ​
to me

Hi Shmu,

Thanks for contacting us.
For your issue, if the data on this partition less than 120GB, you can copy it to 120GB disk without any issue, and you don't need to shrink it, please try to do the clone operation.

Sincerely,

Jason
EaseUS Customer Service Department
Welcome to EaseUS Customer Service and Support Center

Office hours: 9:00 – 18:00 GMT+8


On 2015/2/2 0:06, Shmu wrote:

windows 8.1
I have a partition that is just 90 gb full.
but I can only shrink it down to 150 gb.
I want to shrink it down more, so that I can clone it to a SSD that is 120 gb.
what to do?
I guess that I have "immovable" system files that are spread out on the partition.
how to move them?​

 

[Mark Phelps]

Do NOT use GParted. There have been lots of posts in Linux forums about folks shrinking Windows OS partitions using GParted and leaving Windows unbootable as a result.

Is you use Macrium Reflect, you can image the partition from the HDD and restore the partition to the SSD.

 

[shmu]

Is you use Macrium Reflect, you can image the partition from the HDD and restore the partition to the SSD.

thanks.
so what's all this business about shrinking partitions? It turns out you don't really have to do that, after all?

 

[Mark Phelps]

so what's all this business about shrinking partitions? It turns out you don't really have to do that, after all?

I've been told that with MR, as long as the compressed image file fits on the target disk, you can restore the Image TO it. Thus, if you had a 150GB partition to begin with, but the image file from that backup is only 90GB, then you SHOULD be able to restore that image file to the 120GB drive. Haven't tried it myself, so I don't know if that will really work.