Solved unable to shrink c drive for new partition

Chad · Feb 5, 2008

See attached please

Cannot shrink the C:\ drive to create a new partition.

using Vista Ultimate 64bit with SP1 refresh 2

cisbrane · Feb 5, 2008

I am having a similar issue. It's not that it won't let you shrink, its just not letting you input a large number of MB for some reason. I'm on Ultimate x64 (no sp1) and it says i can only partition 137MB when my hdd has 70GB left. Any ideas why this is happening?

Am i better off using a program like Paragon partition manager? I just don't see why I should have to...

MrHope · Feb 5, 2008

try defragmenting the drive you want to shrink. fragmentation causes free space to be "broken up and scattered on the drive". when it's defragmented, the free space is consolidated at the end of the drive. at least i think it works something like that.

duucfho · Feb 5, 2008

How much free space is left on the drive? Do you have system restore/shadow copyies turned on? That will take up a good deal of space (up to 15% of your total HD space, I believe), but it won't count against free space calculation.

Chad said:
See attached please

Cannot shrink the C:\ drive to create a new partition.

using Vista Ultimate 64bit with SP1 refresh 2

Asky · Feb 5, 2008

@chad can u shrink the other drives ? If yes, then i think the issue may be shrinking of C: which has Vista installed.

You can use Acronis Disk Director or Paragon Partition magic to resize the C: .

Chad · Feb 5, 2008

I did chkdsk which took about an hour. That did not solve it. System restore had already been disabled as well and cleaned up a few days ago. I defragmented and that did not fix the problem either. I am only able to shrink up to 200MB on the C: partition. Strange issue.

duucfho · Feb 5, 2008

Can you post a screenshot of the total/free space on C:

Chad said:
I did chkdsk which took about an hour. That did not solve it. System restore had already been disabled as well and cleaned up a few days ago. I defragmented and that did not fix the problem either. I am only able to shrink up to 200MB on the C: partition. Strange issue.

Chad · Feb 7, 2008

Here is the screenshot

duucfho · Feb 7, 2008

I found this link in google groups. Read the post by Richard Urban, MS MVP. Apparently the vista partition util can utilize free space up until it runs into certain system files. It would appear that some people had luck by removing the pagefile.sys. If you have enough RAM, you could set your paging file to 0 bytes (under advanced system properties), and see if that helps the util. Worst case, you could always re-enable your virtual memory.

Otherwise, Acronis Disk Director isn't too much at $50.

paul.sild · Feb 25, 2008

The problem will be files that are "blocking" the shrinking of the partition - defragmenting should should solve the problem.

If not, the chances are that the master file table (MFT) is in the way, and it needs to be defragmented - this can only be defragmented with a boot defragmentation. I don't know if you can do that with the standard windows defragmentation tool but I know you can with diskeeper (you can download a 30 day trial version, run it once, and select boot time defragmentation options> move the paging file and move the MFT).

paul.sild · Feb 25, 2008

In fact I'm having problems shrinking this drive too...

I have thoroughly defragmented partition c:

It is the only partition on the disk which is ca. 150 GB
The partition is 121 GB in size (ca. 29GB unallocated space)

I want to shrink c: by about 40 GB (the maximum shrink size is about 48GB), so I'm within the limits.

I tried to shrink it but it then reported an error after about 20 minutes...

So I tried shrinking it by 10 MB (just to see), and same error message:

An unexpected error has occurred. Check the system log file etc. etc. etc...

This is a real pain, as I want to shrink c: in order to create two more partitions (d: and e

, one for program files and one for backup files / driver installation software.

Any suggestions?

themoodude · Nov 15, 2008

I'm attempting to rectify the same problem now using Diskeeper 2008 (thanks to paul.sild). Currently defragging, so will report back when it's done!

Peace out!

down45 · Dec 4, 2008

Forget it !!!! I have tried everything I have read on the net diskkeeper paragon partition manager etc........Nothing will free up ALL THAT SPACE you know you have......If your the lucky few, maybe......But I have tried it all and nothing...maybe gain a few mb like went from 43mb to 903.....still not enough to install xp......So guess what ? I already have vista home premium installed and have 2 other physical hard drives so I downloaded easy bcdedit and installed xp on drive d ( physical not logical ) rebooted from the vista dvd and selected repair startup rebooted and ran easy bcdedit.....Added a second os and make sure you keep the hd selection to c drive for the xp ( even though it is installed on d drive ) this is where the boot.ini file looks for the os selection. This works for me and I have been fighting with this for days............

96accord · Jan 14, 2009

bump for updates.

Solved unable to shrink c drive for new partition

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