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I have win 7 professional installed on 300 GB hard-disk,now I want to install Ubuntu and make my system dual boot,when I have 196 GB free,when I run shrink it tells me the following, (all numbers in mb)

Total size before shrink 296025

Size of available shrink space 2190

Enter the amount of space to shrink 2190

Total size after shrink 293835

Does this mean Ubuntu partition will be 2 GB?

Can I proceed with the shrink?

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  • That amount will shrink it by 2190 MB which is not 2 GB.
    – jdwolf
    Nov 28, 2017 at 6:02

2 Answers 2

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I have tried shrinking the system volume to great length and it is really a painful battle. Windows' Partition Manager and Defrag refuses to touch system files (And Windows Loves to store system files in the end of the volume) and results in these pathetic space reduction.

A quick fix is to disable hibernation (run cmd as Administrator and powercfg /h off). If that didn't help, turn off virtual memory or move virtual memory to another volume if available.

(In my case, I couldn't get enough space I needed. I ended up using GParted to resize my system volume.)

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  • I know it is frustrating,I am wasting my time on this only because for some reason svchost.exe and svchost(netsvcs).exe hog all my 2gb ram and I get blue screen, for this reason I am thinking of Ubuntu, otherwise I am ok with win7 as i have lot of work to do
    – Vikram
    Nov 28, 2017 at 8:18
  • I have updated my answer with recommendations on how to get around the Windows file locking issue. But unfortunately, that always requires either another PC or a bit of risk since Linux-based tools are third party.
    – netniV
    Nov 28, 2017 at 8:26
  • Pagefile.sys and hyberfile.sys missing in C
    – Vikram
    Nov 28, 2017 at 8:35
  • That would only occur if you have your advanced system settings set to never create a pagefile. That is unrecommended on Windows. The hyberfile.sys is only present if hibernation is turned on.
    – netniV
    Nov 28, 2017 at 8:36
  • @Vikram, make sure you check with hidden files enabled. dir /ah
    – some user
    Nov 28, 2017 at 19:26
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That would provided a partition that is just over 2GB as the size is in MB and 1024 MB = 1 GB, so 2 GB is 2048 MB. That is quite small for a Linux partition these days though as /boot can eat up 500+ MB easily if you don’t remove old kernels.

You may want to run a defrag on the drive and then shrink it as that will move free space to the end of the disk allowing for a larger partition.

If you are having issues with defrag where Windows keeps locked files from being moved, it may be worth trying to insert the hard drive into another Windows PC and running defrag there, or if you have a good backup, use a Linux-based USB pen to defrag/resize. Whilst gparted resizes, I'm not sure it moves files. Personally, I would always try to use another Windows PC where possible.

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  • Thanx,but I do not have another PC,and currently my disk is only 1% fragmented
    – Vikram
    Nov 28, 2017 at 8:32
  • It isn't the percentage of defragmentation that matters but where the files are stored. To shrink space, the system will only use the space after the furthest file sector used, hence the need to defrag even if it is only slightly fragmented.
    – netniV
    Nov 28, 2017 at 8:36
  • Okey, let me try
    – Vikram
    Nov 28, 2017 at 8:39

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