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I wanted to install Ubuntu 24.04 next to the windows 11 on a Dell XPS 17 9710 (equipped with a 2TB SSD). As I don't want to format the whole C drive, partition and reinstall Windows 11 and then Ubuntu next to it, I decided to shrink the space allocated to the C drive so that I will install Ubuntu required partitions on the remaining unallocated space which freed by the shrinking.

I opened the Windows 11 disk management tool (necessarily by elevating rights), right-clicked the C drive a choose "shrink". In the window that appears, the size of the available shrink space is equal to 1716MB while the free space on the C drive is roughly 300GB when observed in explorer. I thought that maybe there is unmovable files at some point and that this could explain this "inconsistency" between what the disk managing tool is telling and what the file explorer is showing.

So I freed a bit more than 700GB by deleting mainly music and films and emptying the recycle bin. Now I have 1.01TB of free space (on a 2TB SSD) but even after rebooting (you never know) and reopening windows 11 disk management tool I still see that the size of available shrink space is equal to ridiculously small amount of 1716MB.

Do I miss something obvious ?

Edit : details : enter image description here

Olórin
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1 Answers1

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The files you were able to delete are all regular files and thus movable (the Recycle Bin included). The unmovable files most likely are a) pagefile.sys and related; 2) registry; 3) NTFS internal files such as $Mft – i.e. the ones that are permanently "in use" while the system is running.

Boot from a Windows installation USB stick (or boot into the Windows built-in recovery mode), open the Command Prompt there (Shift-F10), then run diskpart and use that to shrink the partition.

(GParted from an Ubuntu live CD may also work – the Linux ntfs tools used to be good at resizing NTFS back in the day, before Windows got that support built-in – but now that running Diskpart from WinPE is an easy option, I'd recommend that first over ntfsprogs.)

grawity
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