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Windows7 Shrink Volume

I used the built in Win7 “shrink volume” under Disk Manager and it shrank the 400+GB volume C: to about 202GB. I want just 60GB for the OS/Apps and will use the rest for data and other partitions. Anyway, seeing that only 20GB was actually being used inside the C: drive, I wasn’t satisfied with this 202GB demand. I rebooted and tried to shrink it again. No luck.

Delete Some “Stuff”

As we all know, new PCs come with lots of preloaded crapware that we don’t want. Not 100GB on a laptop, but still, perhaps there’s some software that is stuck at the end of the storage on C: that removal will allow the shrink to work better. So I remove a few pre-installed things:

• McAfee AV – I use MSE instead
• MS-Office 2010 preview – uh, I have a work VM with MS-Office inside that I use once a quarter whether I need to or not.
• Adobe anything – since I care about security, I don’t have any Adobe software on my systems.
• Games – why do they preload games, but hide solitaire?
• Other assorted free trial software.

Before I forget, yesterday I was busy running all the Windows Update patches and resetting the IE/Internet Security settings for all zones to HIGHEST. I also applied every relevent patch for drivers from Dell, including a BIOS update – which is supposed to deal with overheating issues on this Studio 1558 laptop.

While I’m here, I visit ninite.com and check about 10 pieces of software that I actually want on the box. The site builds a single installer for all of them and I download it. 1 install, 10+ packages. No spyware or toolbars. Things like:

• FireFox
• Thunderbird
• WinSCP
• PuTTy
• 7zip
• MSE
• Pidgin
• NotePad++
• KeePassX
• TrueCrypt
• Others … there are usually a few other tools that when I see them, I want them on my machine.

Nice.

Defrag – Yeah, That’s The Ticket!

I did a defrag (2% fragmentation) of C: to try to compress the data into more efficient chunks. Certainly that would move the data out at the 202GB range down to under 60GB, right? No. That made zero, nada, null difference.

Time to Get Serious

Ok, time to get serious here. I partition the end of the drive for 100GB and drop NTFS there. This will be a backup area for the currently running OS. Then I use the built in Backup and Recovery tool to backup the C: drive (completely) to the new “Y:” drive. 20 minutes later and it is done. It uses about 30GB.

Next, have Windows build a recovery DVD so I can restore the backup from the Y: at a later time. That seemed to work, but when I boot off that DVD, nothing but a nice sky blue background is displayed. After about 10 minutes an error is displayed – just “error” and a long hex code then the machine sits there waiting for an OK, which causes a reboot. That’s worthless. So I have a backup, but can’t use it without a functioning Win7 that can boot. That’s really useful.

Next, boot an xubuntu live CD and run gparted. Ask it to shrink and move the C: partition down to 60GB. It does and doesn’t complain. It claims everything went fine, but it took a good 45 minutes to accomplish. Good thing the TiVo had a few Buffy episodes ready.

At reboot, the system is locked in a Startup Rescue mode for about an hour. I wasn’t hopeful, since anything over a few minutes usually means the box is locked up. When I check on it, I’m shocked. It seems something finally happened and it is waiting at a login prompt. Guess all that cursing of Microsoft wasn’t really needed. I need to reboot to verify that it really did fix something.

Yep. Just checked and not only did the rescue work, but the C: drive is 60GB! That was the entire point after all. No data recovery needed, but I’m still glad I had the backup in addition to the built-in 10GB recovery partition from Dell.

Once again, Linux comes to the rescue, for free.

VirtualBox and Productivity

Now to load VirtualBox and pull my normal WinXP and Lubuntu VMs over so I can be productive on this new laptop again! VMs are very nice for moving logical MS-Windows machines between physical PCs – no issues with hardware changes this way. You don’t really need virtualization for Linux – moving those HDDs between systems just sorta works and definitely doesn’t have licensing issues.

About the Machine …

Yes, this is a new laptop. My old Dell overheated 2 weeks after the warranty coverage ended and fortunately, the credit card that I used had a double the warranty clause and paid off the cost minus about $100. The old laptop had a crappy 1280×800 display which was driving me nuts, so this laptop is 1080p, but still 15 inches. The display is beautiful.

This is a Dell 1558 with:

• Core i5 CPU – quad core; it is the slowest i5 for laptops
• 6GB DDR3 RAM
• 1920×1080 Display
• ATI 5470 discrete 1GB graphics (or is it 5740?)
• 500GB SATA HDD – 7200 rpm
• 10/100/1000 base-tx – we move some data around here
• WiFi-N
• HDMI / VGA video out
• Lots of USB ports
• 5-in-1 memory reader – SDHC/MemoryStik Pro are all that I care about.
• eSATA!
• mini-Firewire (disabled if you care about security!)
• Bluetooth
• Webcam/mic built-in (scotch tape already over it)
• 6-cell battery – ok, so some low end part was needed to keep the price under $850.

Basically, this is a desktop replacement and easily ready for 3+ VMs running at once. Sweet! Yes, I’m easily amused.

Backups and Scheduled, Automatic Backups

When I get back over to the laptop, time for a backup on the network followed by scheduling a weekly backup job. ;) Backups are critical, we all know.