Can't create new partition with windows disk management

[Technochicken]

I am trying to create an approximately 20 gb partition for and OS instalation, on my 120 gigabyte media drive. When I go to Disk Management and try to shrink the volume, it just sits there with the busy mouse symbol. I've left it for about 20 minutes with no change, and I've tried this twice. After I close out computer management and I reopen it, Disk Management will not find my disks until I reboot the computer. It just says "Connecting to Virtual Disk Service..." I've also tried making a partition on my 320 gigabyte hard drive, but it will only let me make a 670 megabyte partition, even though there are 194 gigabytes free on it. The 120 drive has 22.4 free. I've made a partition on the media drive before, though it didn't have as much stuff on it then, but I removed that partition. Is there another free partitioning tool I could use, that won't erase that data on the drive? Or is there some way to fix the problem? Thanks,

TC

 

[red1776]

hi Techno.
I have had great results with partition majic http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Partition-Magic.shtml

 

[raybay]

I'll second that. Partition magic's latest editions are ok... but we really like Acronis above all others.

 

[SNGX1275]

Another one is gParted, its free. But I'm pretty wary of wanting to recommend anything to you. Everything mentioned is more powerful than the built in one in Windows, and if Windows isn't wanting to do it that makes me pretty concerned that something is going to go terribly wrong if you use a 3rd party program.

Back up your stuff before trying anything please.

 

[Technochicken]

Well I seem to have gotten it to work. I retried it and left it for 3 hours, and that did the trick. Thanks for your recommendations.

 

[LookinAround]

was maybe just an issue of the drive, partition size, cpu etc. BUT might want to double check all is good and is worthwhile to take the time to run
chkdsk /r on each of your partitions just to check each filesystem. Can't hurt.

(And know chkdsk can take a looonnnng time to run as well.. give a screen at least 30+ minutes before even thinking it might be hanging on you.) chkdsk might take hours to run on large partitions