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File explorer (by clicking properties on the C: drive icon) reports that I have an 807 GB capacity with 679 GB of free space.

Disk Management (by clicking shrink volume on the C: drive icon) reports that I have 807 GB of capacity but only 281109 MB, or 281 GB, of free space.

My question is how do I resolve the discrepancy. Is File Explorer or Disk Management incorrect, or are they reporting different numbers because they are looking at different (and more/less limited) sets of files and folders?

Of note: I am dual booted with Windows 10/Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. My Ubuntu partition is roughly 100 GB on a 1TB hard disk.

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1 Answers1

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The Disk Management dialog for shrinking a volume is not telling you how much free space exists in its filesystem. Rather, it's telling you by how much Windows can safely shrink the disk. There are system files on the disk that Windows can't move, and apparently, some of them lie about 526 GB along the volume. This of course makes more sense if it's the system (boot) volume than if it's a non-system volume, but I don't have the experience to say whether it can be the case on unmounted volumes as well.

Further reading:

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