How to shrink a partition on your hard drive

Applies to Windows XP Pro and Windows Vista

If you have your hard drive partitioned and want to change the size of the partitions or the amount of partitions you have on your computer, you can. It is still going to wipe your data but if you backup your files to the main partition just while you are shrinking the other partition then you can move it all back after.

How to shrink a partition?

In this tutorial I have 3 partitions on my hard drive. The first is C: drive, then D: drive, and finally E: drive. You can see this in the screenshot below. The first thing I am going to do is shrink E: drive. Now we must open the disk management tool in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

If I shrink a partition will the files be lost or wiped clean?

Yes. Be warned that you must backup any data or files that your partition has on it. If you leave files on there and decide to shrink the partition they will be lost. For example if I shrink partition E: everything on it will be lost.

How to open disk management to shrink a partition?

Go to the start menu.

Right click on my computer or computer for Windows Vista.

Choose manage from the menu.

Choose storage.

Then click on computer management.

Choose Disk Management in the left side menu. Then you see all your drives listed in the right side.

manage hard drives and partitions

When you open disk management you will see the partitions I have on my computer. Now to continue to shrink drive E:

Right click on Drive E: as shown in the screenshot below.
Choose Shrink Volume from the menu.

shrink volume

Now a box will appear. It will automatically choose the size to shrink the partition by.
You can change the size of the shrink by changing the amount in the box that is highlighted blue.
When you are happy with your size press Shrink.

shrink a partition

Now see the screenshot below. My E: partition was 116mb and now it is 58.27mb. The data and files that was on there is gone. And now I have 58.17gb of free space. To use this free space we need to right click on that area and choose to create a new volume. We can also extend E: back out to 116mb by using the free space.

shrinking partitions

Notes on shrinking a partition

You can experiment with any of your partitions but not C: drive.
You cannot shrink C: drive unless you use another program like partition magic.
You can shrink any other partitions but you will still loose the files on it.

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How to label a new hard drive or partition and assign a drive letter?

About the Author

Mitz wrote this article and others for tips4pc.com Browse for more articles that are written in an easy to understand way. Also see our very popular Video Tutorials page. Watching a video is a very easy way to learn about computers.

I hope you've found this tutorial clear and easy to understand. If you have more questions, feel free to visit our FORUM and we'll be happy to help.

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