Easily Shrink a Volume on a Windows 7 Disk

The Windows 7 Disk Management tool provides a simple interface for managing partitions and volumes. Here’s an easy way to shrink a volume to free up space so you can create a new partition on your disk.

 To shrink a basic volume, simple volume, or a spanned volume:

1- Open the Disk Management console by typing diskmgmt.msc at an elevated command prompt. 

 

2-In Disk Management, right-click the volume that you want to shrink, and      then click Shrink Volume.

 

 3-In the field provided in the Shrink dialog box, enter the amount of space by which to shrink the disk. 

The Shrink dialog box provides the following information:
Total Size Before Shrink In MB Lists the total capacity of the volume in MB. This is the formatted size of the volume.
Size Of Available Shrink Space In MB Lists the maximum amount by which you can shrink the volume. This doesn’t represent the total amount of free space on the volume; rather, it represents the amount of space that can be removed, not including any data reserved for the master file table, volume snapshots, page files, and temporary files.
Enter The Amount of Space To Shrink In MB Lists the total amount of space that will be removed from the volume. The initial value defaults to the maximum amount of space that can be removed from the volume. For optimal drive performance, you should ensure that the volume has at least 10 percent of free space after the shrink operation.
Total Size After Shrink In MB Lists what the total capacity of the volume in MB will be after you shrink the volume. This is the new formatted size of the volume. 

4-Click Shrink.

                                                            Thank you:-)

Virtual Hard Disk

Create and Use a Virtual Hard Disk on Windows 7

 

Virtual hard disks (VHDs) are a file type that acts like a hard disk. In previous versions of Windows, VHDs were used by virtual machines, such as those created by Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 or Microsoft Virtual PC. Additionally, Complete PC Backup in Windows Vista created a copy of the computer’s hard disk as a VHD disk image.

Beginning with Windows 7, you can now mount VHDs exactly like a physical disk. By mounting a VHD, you can easily copy files to and from the virtual disk. Additionally, Windows 7 can be configured to boot from a VHD.

You can create a VHD from either the Disk Management snap-in or the command line. After you create the VHD, you must attach it and then format it before you can use it, just like a physical partition.

From the Disk Management console, follow these steps:

 
1. Right-click Disk Management and then click Create VHD. Follow the prompts that appear.
2. Right-click the new disk and then click Initialize Disk. Click OK.
3. Right-click the new disk and then click New Simple Volume (or select a different volume type, if available). Follow the prompts that appear.

The new virtual disk is ready to be used, just like any other disk.

You can also attach and detach this VHD.....