Space available to shrink volume is too low

Hello everyone!

I have a 1TB HDD. My D drive is almost full now and I want to make another big partition from C drive. My C has a total capacity of 570GB which is too much for just OS-supporting software.

I opened Disk Management and chose the option to shrink volume but I only had about 280GB available to shrink while the free space on my C is 455GB!

I read some tutorial about using Partition Wizard Boot CD to shrink larger space. In the tutorial (on sevenforums), I found that in order to use this method I must have 3 or less primary partition on my HDD. This is where the trouble arise. In Disk Management, I see that I have 5 partitions on my HDD, they are:

1. C drive
2. D drive
3. Healthy (EFI Recovery)
4. Healthy (Recovery)
5. Healthy (Recovery)

So I have 5 partitions on my HDD which I think will prevent me from using the Partition Wizard method! The 3 recovery drives is 100% free at the moment so I tried to delete those volumes but I can't. The options either didn't appear or appeared in grey when I right-click on the 3 recovery volumes.

Please help me If you can!

Thanks in advanced!

Kooplelele said:

I opened Disk Management and chose the option to shrink volume but I only had about 280GB available to shrink while the free space on my C is 455GB!

Click to expand...

Windows Disk Management - You cannot shrink the disk volume down more than 50% of original size.

Kooplelele said:

I read some tutorial about using Partition Wizard Boot CD to shrink larger space. In the tutorial (on sevenforums), I found that in order to use this method I must have 3 or less primary partition on my HDD. This is where the trouble arise.

Click to expand...

Instructions are for MBR partition table. Your hard drive has a GPT partition table.

Here is info about UEFI Boot Mode (installing using the GPT partition style) and Legacy BIOS Boot Mode (installing using the MBR partition style): link

Kooplelele said:

3. Healthy (EFI Recovery)
4. Healthy (Recovery)
5. Healthy (Recovery)

Click to expand...

Windows does not start, if you delete the EFI System partition.

You can't Refresh or Reset, if you delete the recovery partitions.

Originally Posted by Kooplelele

I opened Disk Management and chose the option to shrink volume but I only had about 280GB available to shrink while the free space on my C is 455GB!

Click to expand...

Windows Disk Management - You cannot shrink the disk volume down more than 50% of original size.

Click to expand...

Depending on how fragmented your C drive is, specially if you have some unmovable files such as pagefile.sys/hiberfil.sys sitting near the end of C drive then you can only shrink back to the available continous space. and of course you can shrink more than 50% if space is available.

I suggest that you download: Bootable Partition Manger | MiniTool Partition Wizard Bootable Edition and use Rufus to create a bootable USB then boot the PC from it:

1. Right click on drive C, select Resize back to 150GB (provided if drive C does not contain more than 150GB of Windows/Data files) then you would have ~300GB unallocated free space in between C: and D:
2. Next, Right click on D drive, select Move then drag drive D to the left. This will move the 300GB to the right of drive D.
3. Reboot the PC and open disk management, right click on drive D and select extend partition.

NOTE: Do not touch any other partitions

Thank you! I was finally able to shrink it using Partition Wizard. Thank you very much!