Where did my free space go?

Greetings,

I have a 100GB hard drive with two partitions on it.  The first is 30GB and it's where I keep the OS (Windows Vista Ultimate) and program files.  The other 70GB partition is where I keep my personal files.  The 30GB partition is filling up, so I wanted to add some space to it from the 70GB partition.  Here's what I did:

1) I used the Windows Vista disk management console to shrink the 70GB partition by 1GB.  This left the hard drive in the following condition: 30GB partition - 69GB partition - 1GB unallocated space

2) I used the GParted Live CD to move the 69GB partition so that the 1GB unallocated space would be contiguous with the 30GB partition.

3) Again using the Vista disk management console, I extended the 30GB partition into the 1GB unallocated space.

This all seemed to go smoothly, but I am having a problem.  When I look at the statistics for the new 31GB partition, the computer seems to recognize that the parition is now 1GB larger, but the amount of free space in the partition is the same as before I did all of these operations.  It's as if the computer can see that the space is there, but it doesn't recognize it as free space, so I can't use it.

I use PerfectDisk defragmenter, and when I do an analysis of the 31GB partition using PerfectDisk, there is a large block of space that shows up as "excluded files."  I am thinking that this must be the 1GB I added to the partition which is for some reason unaccessible...

Can anyone help me out with this?

THANKS!
Bradley