Solved Is it normal for Disk Management to take hours to shrink a partition?

Status update: The shrink operation completed. So, it was in fact doing something. I have one disk to go, think I will try AOMEI.

Hopefully aomei will be better. If it is a big shingled disk they aint quick for that kind of operation.

another way is to run O&O defrag SPACE before attempting a shrink. There is also solid, dont know which is better

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it has pretty graphs so you can see it doing things


had a look with diskgenius after running O&O space

I installed Aomei but it didn't want to allow me to size it PRECISELY how I wanted. It was always off by a few MB in the preview. Because the precise size was important in this instance, I just did it again with Disk Management, being fully aware that I might have to let it run overnight. Thankfully, that was not the case and it finished the operation in about 5 seconds.

Bottom line is that I'm all good now and learned a few things in the process. I call that a win on both counts.

Thanks to everyone for your help.

cereberus said:

I just use minitool partition wizard free - it shrinks partitions in a fraction of the time moving unmoveable files.

Are you sure there is not a physical hardware issue with drive? If there are some bad sectors, this can have a massive impact on shrinking times.

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+1 to the free version of MiniTool Partition Wizard. I use it probably once a month or more.

I'm going to give all of these a try. Even though this is such a rare task for me, that one time you need a tool like this I'm sure it can be a lifesaver.

Thanks once more to everyone. I'm very thankful for all of the suggestions.

But to summarize: At least in Win 11 24H2, Disk Management is capable of moving data if needed to facilitate the shrinking of a volume unless one of the unmovable files is in the way. Technically, I don't know if it is simply moving files or performing a defrag, but the result is the same. On a spinning platter HDD this can be slooow because it has to read and write to the same drive meaning an intense amount of seeking by the read / write heads and that is terribly slow.

If I had a wish it would be that Disk Management gave some inkling that it is actually doing something. I guess a progress bar might be too much to ask, but a simple message saying something like "this might take a long time" would be nice.

you can also use diskpart to perform those tasks

BUT*

When you shrink a partition, certain files (for example, the paging file or the shadow copy storage area) cannot be automatically relocated, and you cannot decrease the allocated space beyond the point where the unmovable files are located

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