How to shrink a Windows partition
Date Added: 8/1/2016

The Disk Management applet allows you to shrink partitions, but only if there are no files in the way.  If there is a file stored near the end of the partition, the Disk Management utility will not be able to shrink the partition very much.  The GUI version of the Windows Defrag tool only defrags the files, but it generally leaves those files where they are, which probably means it won't help you here.  You have to use the command line version of the defrag utility in order to move all the files towards the beginning of the partition.

defrag c: /X /U /V

The /X will consolidate free space which moves all the files towards the beginning of the partition, leaving as much free space as possible at the end of the partition.

The /U and /V just make it display verbose output to the command prompt so you can watch its progress.

---

Back to List