Just bought a secondhand desktop with Win XP installed, no install media. I want to install another opsys, but keep XP in a 8-9 Gb partition and free 30 Gb for another opsys. Thought to use the good old method - defrag & DFSEE Create Partition. However the defrag does not do its job properly, after several repetitions the files are still in 3 separate blocks with huge amount of empty space in between. "Create Partition" tells me I've got 8 Gb empty space available at the end. I suspect the problem is that there are some files (like pagesys) which XP thinks are in use. My very old PartitionMagic tells the opsys is incompatible. Any clever ideas how to go on?
turn off hibernation & set page-file to none then reboot,enter C unhide all files including system files,pagefile should be there delete it,empty trash then defrag,that's all you can do,certain system files are un-movable,however if space is an issue get a larger drive,easeus todo backup is free it can be used to create a backup of c ps:if your unsure how to turn off hyberfile & unhide pagefile web search it
I removed everything I could (paging, hibernating, etc.) but no luck. There still stayed a thin data bar around 32 Gb. Scanned for defragmenters, downloaded one called Mydefrag (I think) which obediently removed that offending piece, so now I have well over 30 Gb for other purposes. Seemed a very good piece of software to me. And yes, I am leaving some empty space in XP partition, too, thou I use it quite seldom. It seems to want extra space for updates.
