Vista has a utility which allows the user to shrink partitions. This is a useful thing to be able to do, especially as the primary drives fitted into computers are now exceeding 250gb regularly.

You just know that there has to be a catch. Remember that Microsoft can't get away with including full featured utilities without incurring lawsuits.

Let's look at the scenario where you have a very large C partition and a small recovery partition. If you shrink C, all freed space ends up at the end of the drive, behind the recovery partition. This is ok as long as you want to create a partition to store data away from the operating system.

However, some computers are supplied with a relatively small C partition and an excessively large D partition. There is no way to free space from D to give to C while still retaining a D partition. The Vista utility can't do this for the reason already stated.

There are no free utilities that will do the job. If you want to manage your drive, you are going to have to pay.

BootItNG is available as a 30day trial, after which you have to pay.

Partition Magic 8 works for XP but WILL NOT WORK with Vista.

Acronis Disk Director suite 10 will work with XP and Vista, and is undoubtedly the best disk manager. Recommended.

Whatever you use, always always back up your important data first.