Cannot shrink partitions on Samsung 830

Hi all, I want to create a new partition on my 256gb Samsung 830 SSD by shrinking the current one. I use the newest Windows 8 compatible Samsung Magician tool to optimize my SSD. I know it disables indexing service, which is needed for shrinking, so I re-enabled it. But it still won't let me shrink my partition.

It tells me: "The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled, or because it has no enabled devices associated with it."

What to do?

Thanks in advance

Did you try using the Windows 8 built-in tools? See image below:

I'm sorry that's what I use. I forgot to mention that it is Windows Disk Management that gives me the error message. You can't manage partitions with Samsung SSD Magician.

How about uninstalling the Samsung Magician, reboot, use Windows Disk Management, then reinstall the Samsung Magician?

Alternately, you could download GParted and manage the partitions outside of the Windows environment; however, I have no idea what the "magician" would do upon reboot (possibly having a conflict of information):
GParted -- Download

Uninstalling Samsung Magician did not work, even after a reboot. I double-checked whether the indexing service was enabled and it was. Still no luck. I'd rather perform this from inside Windows, because it's something I use quite often. This way I'm also sure that I won't damage my Windows partition by making a mistake. Thanks for the thought anyway.

How about a snapshot of you partitions (similar to mine)?

RobinSchouten said:

It tells me: "The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled, or because it has no enabled devices associated with it."

Click to expand...

Also, I'm thinking the magician may have hidden your drives. Do they show up in the defrag view? FYI, some say they could manage partitions after temporarily enabling defrag; however, in my case, I have defrag turned off and I could still shrink partitions if needed:

How about try it using command line diskpart (command reference: DiskPart - Partition a disk | SS64.com). Before you do this, I suggest temporarily turn off Hibernation and also either set pagefile.sys to none or re-assign it to your 1TB hard disk. Open elevated command prompt, type diskpart and try as shown below which I shrunk my SSD by 100 GB



Disk Management shows the result below

Just a heads up, Windows Disk Management won't resize partitions on GPT disk. I had to use the Mini Tool Partition Wizard on mine.
Free Partition Magic alternative, partition manager freeware, partition magic server, partition magic Windows 7 and free Partition Manager software for Windows 7/8/VISTA/XP/2000 and Windows Server 2003/2008/2000.

norepli said:

RobinSchouten said:

It tells me: "The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled, or because it has no enabled devices associated with it."

Click to expand...

Also, I'm thinking the magician may have hidden your drives. Do they show up in the defrag view? FYI, some say they could manage partitions after temporarily enabling defrag; however, in my case, I have defrag turned off and I could still shrink partitions if needed:

View attachment 18452

Click to expand...

I cannot open anything related to disk defragmentation. Not when I right click on my drives and not when I select the service from control panel. I click, but nothing opens.

@alphanumeric, my disk is not GPT.

Let's see if I can make sense of diskpart now.

Appreciate the help, guys.

Again no luck, it comes up with the same error as I mentioned in the first post. (but in Dutch, naturally)

i have exhausted this on a samsung laptop normal hdd, it will not shrink because the mft files are placed at the opposite end of the partition to the windows 8 files in the "c" drive.

samsung support cold not grasp the problem, if you use a 3rd party defrag that shows a coloured block chart tou will see the mft files at the very end these are not moveable preventing shrinking of the partition.
only complete reinstall using a w8 dvd will fix it.

alphanumeric said:

Just a heads up, Windows Disk Management won't resize partitions on GPT disk. I had to use the Mini Tool Partition Wizard on mine.
Free Partition Magic alternative, partition manager freeware, partition magic server, partition magic Windows 7 and free Partition Manager software for Windows 7/8/VISTA/XP/2000 and Windows Server 2003/2008/2000.

Click to expand...

So I was able to shrink my partition using this MiniTool. Easy enough. But that ofcourse was alternative to the original problem. So it's not actually solved, but I found a workaround. Thanks!

I'm glad it worked for you, I used it in the past when windows disk management wouldn't do what I wanted to do. Free is good too.

FYI, Since I also have a SSD Samsung 830 128GB in another PC. I was curious why you couldn't shrink so here's what I found.

1. Ran Shrink volume from Disk Management, after querying it said I have ~70 GB available but it will give an error message:
   
   
2. Ran Perfect Disk Pro, it showed a snapshot of my SSD with files scattered at the end of the drive
   
   
3. Ran Perfect Disk Pro again to Consolidate Free Space
   
   
4. Now I can shrink it by 50GB
   
   

In conclusion, If files on your SSD are scattered, specially your pagefile.sys and hiberfil.sys are sometimes placed at the end of the disk, you will not be able to shrink it. In addition, if you get an error and was not able to shrink using Disk Management then there must be something wrong with your SSD, you might want to take a look at updating the firmware etc...

If Optimize drives service is disabled partitions shrinking won't work in Disk Management.

brummyfan said:

If Optimize drives service is disabled partitions shrinking won't work in Disk Management.

Click to expand...

Good point !!!

topgundcp said:

brummyfan said:

If Optimize drives service is disabled partitions shrinking won't work in Disk Management.

Click to expand...

Good point !!!

Click to expand...

Thank you.