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I have Windows 10 installed on an SSD. In File Explorer it says that this drive has 59.5GB free of 109GB. I am attempting to shrink this partition quite significantly. When I go into Disk Management to shrink the partition it says that the total size of the partiton before the shrink is 112,371MB, yet it says that the available space to shrink is 11,857MB.

Why is it that I am only allowed to shrink a fraction of the total free space?

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  • What output do you get when you execute fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify in a command window?
    – AStopher
    Nov 15, 2015 at 21:27
  • @bob It returns DisableDeleteNotify = 0
    – KOB
    Nov 15, 2015 at 21:29

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Usually this would be caused by disk fragmentation, but as you're using a HDD this isn't the case. We have also verified that TRIM is enabled, so Windows is correctly managing the disk:

It returns DisableDeleteNotify = 0

This therefore means that you have an unmovable file located within the partition. Unmovable files are mostly files that are currently in-use by Windows and cannot be moved, for example the Windows paging file (hence 'unmovable').

The solution to this is to backup & reinstall Windows, completely wiping the disk in the process. You may want to use a backup tool such as Windows Backup to back-up the drive to an external storage media, and then restore from the Windows installation media after formatting the disk.

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  • If it is only the paging file, you can disable that, reboot, delete it and resize, and then finally create a new paging file. No reinstall is needed. However, I recall that directories also can be non-movable. Nov 15, 2015 at 21:46
  • @ThomasDickey I used that as an example, it's not the only unmovable file.
    – AStopher
    Nov 15, 2015 at 21:47
  • Then you need a better example :-) Nov 15, 2015 at 21:47

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