A question on moving all the contents of a disk to its end

[dando]

  Hello! Sorry if my question is too trivial and it has already been answered.
I've got a hard disk that has only user data (Music, Documents, Pictures, Videos). It is a Hitachi 500GB (physically available are 465GB, 145GB of which are free space). I'd like to move all those files to the end of the disk, separate the first free 70GB of the disk as a C: partition and leave the rest user files in the existing, but shrinked by 70GB, D: partition. How could this be easily and effectively achieved?
On the C: partition I'd clean install Windows 7.
Here's a photo from the Analysis:

BTW, the latest version of MyDefrag seems to be working fine on Windows 8 Consumer preview. Would it be wise to perform those task under this new OS? Unfortunately I don't have any other OS available right now.

Thank you!

Nickolay

[Darlis]

Hi Nickolay,

moving files to the end of the disk is indeed trivial: just use the MoveToEndOfDisk script you can find in the examples script folder.

However, shrinking the volume to make room at the beginning of the disk may not be as trivial: There are always unmovable files at the very beginning of the volume and Windows might refuse the cut off the beginning of the volume (if that is even supported). The partition managers I know usually handle it by cutting of the end of the volume and then move the whole volume to the end of the disk. Moving files around beforehand would be pointless in the case.

[dando]

Darlis, thank you for the answer!
Any other recommendations? I don't think using a partition manager would be a problem, but I'd like to hear some recommendations. I'd also prefer to get some advice on completing this task without much confusion.

Thank you,
Nickolay

[Darlis]

Just use a partition manager to create the partitions as needed, don't move any files beforehand. You probably can't use the the one integrated in Windows since it is very limited in it's functionality. A good and free partition manager is GParted (included in PartedMagic).

Before meddling with partitions, make a complete backup first. And once you have a complete backup it might be an idea to just remove all volumes, recreate them as you like and then move everything back again. This is probably faster than moving/resizing volumes.

[dando]

Thank you again! I'm doing the manipulation right now via GParted. It seems to have a very user-friendly interface. I backed up my important data. Hopefully everything will turn out nicely.
I guess the "Move to right" is equal to "move to the end of the disk".

Nickolay