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How To Shrink A Partition or Volume in Windows 7

This document provides two methods for shrinking a partition or volume in Windows 7 to create unallocated disk space. Method one uses Disk Management in Computer Management to right click a partition and shrink it by a specified number of MB. Method two uses the Diskpart command in an elevated command prompt to select a volume, check the maximum shrink size, and shrink it by all available space or a specified size in MB. Both methods create new unallocated space that can be used to form a new partition.

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Mohamed Shareef
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75 views

How To Shrink A Partition or Volume in Windows 7

This document provides two methods for shrinking a partition or volume in Windows 7 to create unallocated disk space. Method one uses Disk Management in Computer Management to right click a partition and shrink it by a specified number of MB. Method two uses the Diskpart command in an elevated command prompt to select a volume, check the maximum shrink size, and shrink it by all available space or a specified size in MB. Both methods create new unallocated space that can be used to form a new partition.

Uploaded by

Mohamed Shareef
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to Shrink a Partition or Volume in

Windows 7
    Information
This will show you how to shrink an existing partition or volume using Disk Management
or Diskpart in Windows 7 to create unallocated disk space, from which you can create
a new partition or volume with.

    Warning
You must be logged on in an administrator account to be able to do this tutorial.

If while shrinking a partition below, you get a Convert to Dynamic disks? type
prompt, do not do so.

If you disable the Disk Defragmenter service, then you will get the error below when
you try to do anything in Disk Management. If you get this error, then make sure that
the Disk Defragmenter service is set to only Manual.

METHOD ONE
Using Disk Management
1. Open the Control Panel (All Items view), and click on the Administrative Tools
icon. then close the Control Panel window.

2. Click on Computer Management in Administrative Tools, then close the


Administrative Tools window.

3. In the left pane under Storage, click on Disk Management. (See screenshot below)
4. In the middle pane, right click on the partition that you want to shrink and click on
Shrink Volume. (See screenshot above)

5. Type in how many MB (1 GB = 1024 MB) of the available shrink space shown that
you want to shrink the partition or volume by to be used for the new unallocated space,
then click on the Shrink button. (See screenshot below)
    Warning
The size of the available shrink space can be restricted by the amount of space
currently allocated to on the hard drive for the virtual memory page file, System
Protection maximum storage space size, and hibernation files. The location of the
files on the hard drive plays a big part here because these files are marked as
unmovable, and Disk Management is unable to relocate them. As such, if these
unmovable files are located in the middle of the total amount of free space on the disk,
then only the amount of free space on the other side (to the right) of these files will
actually be available for the new partition. This will result in you showing that you have x
amount of free space, but not being able to use it for your partition. The only way
around this is to use a 3rd party hard drive partition management program, or setup the
partition when installing Vista.

6. The selected partition (step 4) has now been shrunk to create a new empty
unallocated space. You can use this new unallocated space to create a new partition
with. (See screenshot below)

7. Close the Computer Management window. (See screenshot above)

METHOD TWO
Using Diskpart in a Elevated Command Prompt
1. Open a elevated command prompt, or a command prompt at boot.
2. In the elevated command prompt, type diskpart and press Enter. (See screenshot
below)

3. In the elevated command prompt, type list volume and press Enter. (See
screenshot below)
NOTE: This will give you a list of volume numbers to select from to shrink.

4. In the elevated command prompt, type select volume # and press Enter. (See
screenshot below)
NOTE: You would substitute # for the volume number listed that you want to shrink. For
example, I want to shrink the listed volume 2, so I would type select volume 2 and
press Enter.

5. In the elevated command prompt, type shrink querymax and press Enter. (See
screenshot below)
NOTE: This will give you the maximum amount of size in MB that you can shrink the
selected partition or volume (step 4) by to be used as the new unallocated space. For
example, I have 696 GB available to shrink.

6. To Shrink All of the Available Space -


A) In the elevated command prompt, type shrink and press Enter.
NOTE: This will shrink the selected partition or volume by all of the maximum number of
reclaimable bytes (step 4) to be used for the new unallocated space.

B) Go to step 8.
7. To Shrink the Available Space by a Specified Size -
A) In the elevated command prompt, type shrink desired=(# in MB) and press Enter.
(See screenshot below)
NOTE: You would substitute (# in MB) for how many MB (1 GB = 1024 MB) you want
to shrink the selected partition or volume (step 4) by to be used for the new unallocated
space. For example, if I only wanted to shrink the partition or volume by 81920 MB (80
GB), then I would type shrink desired=81920 and press Enter.

8. In the elevated command prompt, type exit and press Enter. (See screenshot
below)

9. Close the elevated command prompt.

10. The selected partition (step 4) has now been shrunk to create a new empty
unallocated space. You can use this new unallocated space to create a new partition
with.
That's it,
Shawn

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