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I have more than 500GB free on my C: drive but Windows Disk management says that the shrink size is 0. I followed all the steps here, here, here and here but none of these solutions worked:

  • Turn off Virtual memory
  • Turn off System Restore and delete restore points
  • Turn off hibernation
  • Disable kernel memory dump

After having done all these, the shrink size remains 0.

MagTun
  • 1,598

1 Answers1

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What worked for me is:

  1. Run in an Admin terminal and reboot when asked: 
    ChkDsk C: /f
  2. When done, log into Windows, wait for Windows to load, then reboot (this second boot is important)
  3. Create a Ubuntu live USB and boot it, choosing to Try Ubuntu
  4. Open Gparted and shrink your partition, which creates unallocated space
    • Don't bother creating a new volume in the unallocated, as Windows won't detect it (it didn't for me, and I had to re-create it in Disk management)
  5. Boot back to Windows and run: 
    ChkDsk C: /f


In my case, I started with Gparted, which said that there was an error and had to reboot to Windows and run chkdsk C: /f, rebooting twice when finished. I tried again to shrink the partition with Disk Management, but the size was still 0, so I rebooted to Ubuntu and Gparted was able to perform the shrink without any error.

  • Gparted is amazing and runs a test before shrinking, providing a solution to fix the detected problems
  • I'm unsure if it is linked or not, but when I tried to make a System Image a day later, there was an error on the disk, with a request to run chkdsk C: /f; after doing so, the error resolved and I could make the system image.
JW0914
  • 9,096
MagTun
  • 1,598