2 ways to shrink partition in Windows 10

Shrink partition in Disk Management

Sometimes you need to shrink disk partition after installing Windows 10, for example: C drive occupied all disk space, so you need to shrink it to create more drives. To do this, Windows 10 built-in Disk Management utility can help you. However, many people feedback that they can’t shrink partition in Windows 10 DM (learn why), in that case, you have to use professional disk partition software.

Another common reason why shrinking disk partition in Windows 10 is because of insufficient free space. When a hard drive is running out of disk space, you can increase its free space by taking from other partitions. To do this, Windows 10 Disk Management cannot help you.

3 steps to shrink partition in Windows 10 Disk Management:

 Right click  on bottom left corner of the screen, and then select Disk Management.

 Right click the partition that you want to shrink, and then select Shrink Volume.

 Enter the amount of space and click Shrink to start.

In a short time, this partition is shrank.

Limitation of Windows 10 Shrink Volume function:

• It cannot shrink a partition with maximum available space in most cases.
• It can only shrink little space if there are unmovable files located in this partition.
• It can only shrink a partition towards the left and produce Unallocated space on the right side.
• Only NTFS partition is supported.

As I said above, it is impossible if you want to extend a partition by shrinking another one, because Extend Volume can only expand the drive with adjacent Unallocated space on the right side.

In my Windows 10 laptop, 20GB Unallocated space is generated after shrinking partition D. Extend Volume is greyed out for C drive, because the Unallocated space is nonadjacent to it. Extend Volume is disabled for drive E, because the Unallocated space is on its left side.

Shrink volume with partition software

Comparing with Windows 10 Disk Management, disk partition software such as NIUBI Partition Editor is more powerful. To shrink disk partition, you just need to drag and drop on the disk map. Unallocated space can be produced on either side, which can be used to extend either adjacent partition. Furthermore, FAT16/32 partitions can be shrank, too.

Watch the video how to shrink partition in Windows 10 with NIUBI PE:

Options after shrinking a drive

There are two common options after shrinking partition in Windows 10: create new volume and extend another drive (no matter it’s adjacent or not).

 Create new volumes:

Download NIUBI Partition Editor, right click the Unallocated space and select Create Volume.

In the pop-up window, you may either use the default settings or change by yourself. If you want to use part of the Unallocated space, you may drag either border of this partition to specify size.

 If this hard disk is MBR, there is additional option to select creating new partition as Primary or Logical.

 Extend another drive

If the Unallocated space is adjacent on either side of the drive that you want to extend, simply run Resize/Move Volume to combine. If the Unallocated is nonadjacent, you can move it with “Resize/Move Volume”.

Watch the video:

 

Comparing with other partition tool, NIUBI Partition Editor has many benefits when shrinking and extending partition, for example:

• Working in virtual mode, the operations you do will be listed as pending for preview, real disk partition won’t be modified until you click Apply to confirm.
• 1 Second Rollback to ensure system and data intact. If you any software or hardware issue occur, it automatically reverts the computer to original status in a flash like nothing happened.
• Hot-Resize technology helps shrink and extend partition without rebooting.
• Cancel-at-will technology allows you cancelling the ongoing operations without losing data.
• Advanced file-moving algorithm helps resize partition 30% to 300% faster.

As professional disk partition software, it helps do many disk partition management operations.