Shrink a Windows 7 Volume below Half

OK, time out from sailing for some tech talk. I could not find this solution anywhere so I thought I would post something telling how to shrink a volume in Windows 7. There are lots of answers out there that all involve spending money on 3rd party tools. But there is a fairly simple way to do it.

The issue is that Windows/NTFS stores an MFT file halfway along the drive which is an unmovable system file, which means not matter how little data you have on a drive you can't shrink past just over halfway since that file is started just past the halfway point on the volume.

This came up when I tried to restore a backup that used only 300GB of space or so onto a 640GB volume. You'd think that would work right? Well unfortunately Microsoft in all its brilliance decided that since the original backup came from a 1280GB volume, it couldn't be done. This will give an error about 'no suitable disk for restore found'.

The answer is to shrink the volume and then perform another backup with the smaller volume size which will then fit onto a smaller drive. Follow these basic steps to do that.

1. Defragment the drive. Always required. You can try using the windows utilities which should do the job. There is also a free alternative which actually uses a microsoft utility that will do a very thorough job as well. Power Defragmenter.
2. You may need to also move some system files around. You can follow steps from here. Howtogeek.com - working-around-windows-vistas-shrink-volume-inadequacy-problems
3. Create a system repair disk. Control Panel->Backup and Restore->Create a System Repair Disk.
4. Boot using that disk.
5. When it starts, cancel the restore process, and start a Windows Command Prompt.
6. Run diskpart
      list volumes
      select volume 2 # Choose the volume that corresponds to the drive you are trying to shrink.
      shrink querymax # This will tell you how much it can shrink
      shrink # Defaults to shrinking to the maximum amount.

That should be it. If you still can't shrink the disk, try doing it in Windows using Computer Management->Disk Manager. When it fails there, it will log an error in the event log telling you which file is involved, and you should be able to move that using one of the steps in step 2 above.

OK, back to sailing. Or maybe riding my bike.

Lake Murray, SC

A couple weeks back I headed out for another weekend of sailing and camping. I had originally planned to head back to Lake Marion again, but got a late start so halfway there I decided to try Lake Murray, which is just west of Columbia, SC. Lake Murray turned out to be a great lake for sailing, The weather was pretty heavy that first day with avg 15 knot winds with only a few gusts coming in but those that did were pretty heavy.

A fair bit of heeling even with just the main up

The whole day ended up being a close reach which I actually enjoyed quite a bit. Beam reaches are just too easy! I had the rail close to the water most of the day since my main sail is very full which works well in light air, but ends up causing a lot of heel. I started to put in reef points but haven't set the grommets yet. At one point after I had rolled out the genoa (I'm not much for caution), a good gust caught me which put the coaming all the way in the water and made me take on about ten gallons of water! Which pointed out the need to enlarge the cockpit drains. And got my feet wet. Fortunately my beer didn't spill so disaster averted. I also wanted to practice heaving to and learned that my boat will heave to quite nicely in strong winds which was good to know. I spent a fair bit of time looking for a good place to camp and finally found a quiet cove that already had a fire pit and settled in for the night.

The following morning was quite pretty and after a couple cups of coffee and some oatmeal I was ready to go. Unfortunately, the wind was not ready to cooperate.

What took about 3 1/2 hours to get out to, ended up taking the better part of almost 12 hours to get back. The wind had died overnight for the most part and shifted so I was back on a close reach which is no fun in light shifting winds. Only had a small trolling motor but worse I hadn't put back in the larger batteries so I was stuck trying to gather what wind I could and paddling to get somewhere. Ugh. You can see in the track below the straight line out and the much less fun track back. And the glassy conditions at times on the lake in the picture above. Ah well, it was still nice to get out and learned a few more tricks and made it back so all in all a good weekend.

Companionway Updates

I got some new bits on the boat today. The hatch on the Newport 16 is basically just a cover that sits on top, nothing to hold it down. So I got a couple of Sea Dog hatch hinges that have a removable pin in case I do want or need to take it off. I also got a twist type hatch adjuster to hold it open which will make it a lot easier to grab things from down below without climbing all the way in. At 6'3" the cabin is awfully tight so I like to just lean in. But then I don't quite clear the hatch with my back if I put a knee on the companionway sill, I had to move very slow and it was quite a pain.

You can also just see the new drop board bits I built which I'll get pics of later.