How do I move the physical location of $MFTMirr, to allow resizing the partition?

Solution 1:

The mentioned PerfectDisk can do this, actually. You just need to know that you must select Boot Time in the main screen, which will perform an offline defrag or a on-next-boot defrag (depending on whether this is the current OS disk).

See also this related question by me, and this little blog that I wrote, containing more details on how this all comes together.

Solution 2:

I am a dummy. and it took me 2 days to finally shrink my C: sys volume (WINDOWS 7). the solution I found is terribly simple.

  1. I downloaded the free app PerfectDisc, installed
  2. on 'Global Settings' I selected and ticked: PerfectDisk manages book and prefetch files'
  3. right click on C: - Drive preferences - select: 'Default optimization method' = 'Prep for Shrink' and 'Free Space search method' = 'Forward'
  4. now start defragging (play button)
  5. try also to turn on 'boot time defrag', and press the 'boot time defrag' button in the upper menu (requires restart)

Good Luck everybody !!! what a relief