>Hi, people.
>
>After having Vista installed just for a few tests for a couple months, I finally decided to definitively switch to Vista full-time.
>
>When I first installed it in my new notebook (which came with XP Pro), I made a 20 GB partition out of my 200 GB to install it, naively assuming I would be able to easily extend it later if needed.
>
>Now my HD is partitioned like:
>C - 178 GB
>V - 22 GB
>
>Of course, as I'm now installing everything else in Vista, the 22 GB is not enough. I already moved most User folders to C: (this is something easier to do in Vista), except AppData which can't be relocated. The main problem is in the Windows folder itself, taking 10+ GB that I can't reduce in any way.
>
>I tried to shrink the C partition (to be able to expand V later) to no avail. I tried with Vista's disk management, with Diskpart and with Partition Magic. In all cases I don't have an option, or Diskpart tells me that the maximum I can shrink C is 800 Kb. Of course I have more than 60 GB free in C.
>
>I tried defragmenting with PerfectDisk (several times) to see if there is something in the disk which is blocking me, but nothing changed.
>
>As you can see, I'm not good at partitioning. Is there any way in which I can chop some 30 GB from C and add them to V?

Hmm, you're already doing basically the right thing. To be able to shrink a partition, basic tools require that there be unused free space at its end so you need to defrag - as you've already tried. Trouble is, some files tend to get written to the end of the partition either by Windows or by user apps, and don't get moved by defragging so resizers refuse to shrink partitions.

Some utilities may have advanced knowledge of Windows internals so they can successfully shrink partitions even if system files are at the end of the partition. Maybe you could contact the makers of various utilities such as http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/ to see if they have this advanced support (I don't know off the top of my head).

There are some open-source disk management utilities that you could try: GPartEd (liveCD) and/or KPartEd and related NTFSCLONE image backup/restore utilities available on LiveCDs such as Knoppix.

Be aware that even if you're successful in shrinking the XP partition, you'll probably have to at least image the Vista partition, blow it away, combine the new free space plus old Vista partition then restore the image to the new, larger partition. Vista may not like this - either being in a larger partition or at a different starting sector on the HD, either due to its boot process or due to its copy protection. You may end up having to reinstall Vista on the new larger partition.

Another brute-force way to go might be to get a larger HD for your laptop, then image both partitions and restore them to the new one. But large laptop HDs are probably still pretty expensive.