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Windows Vista’s ‘Shrink Volume’ feature has some serious limitations. Sometimes it will not shrink the drive eventhough you have free space on your drive. This is because there are some system files which has to be moved before you could continue shrinking. I recommend not to try the following steps if you are a beginner in computer usage.
Preparatory Steps
- Make sure you are running in administrator mode.
- Run the disk clean up wizard and delete everything that is shown on screen.
- Disable ‘System Restore’. (Click here to know)
- Disable ‘Pagefile’(Virtual Memory). (Click here to know)
- Disable ‘Hibernation’. (Click here to know)
- Disable ‘kernel memory dump’. (Click here to know)
- Download ‘Perfect Disk’ and install it.
- Download ‘Auslogics Disk Defrag’ and install it.
I would suggest to first defragment the system using inbuilt software before continuing any further.
Diagnostic Steps
- Run ‘Auslogics Disk Defrag’ .
- Keep an eye on the screen. The yellow box is the MFT(Master File Table).
- MFT is the main reason for the limitation in shrinking the volume.
Shifting MFT is only possible when Windows is not accessing it. For that it should run before Windows Vista loads itself. In the following steps, we will try to shift the MFT. MFT may not shift to one end to enable you to shrink the entire free space. MFT shifts subsequently in each step. So you may have repeat shifting MFT unless you cannot do it any further.
Core Steps
- Run ‘Perfect Disk’
- Right Click on the desired drive and select ‘Drive Properties’.
- Click on ‘Offline Defragmentation’.
- Check on all the three options under defragmentation settings and click ‘OK’.
- Restart the system.
- Before Vista loads, you will notice a black screen with defragmentation going on.
- After Vista loads itself, perform ‘Shrink Volume’ for whatever space is available.
- Repeat the steps ‘5 to 7′ and shrink the volume till it can be done.
After you are done with this do not forget to perform the following actions.
The following actions are only recommended, it is totally on user’s discretion.
- Enable ‘System Restore’. (Click here to know)
- Enable ‘Pagefile’(Virtual Memory). (Click here to know)
- Enable ‘Hibernation’. (Click here to know)
- Enable ‘kernel memory dump’. (Click here to know)
- Uninstall ‘Perfect Disk’.
- Uninstall ‘Auslogics Disk Defrag’.
For any query please send email to saurabh(at)techwhiz(dot)in