[Fix] “Cannot shrink a volume beyond the point” when Resizing a Partition Using Disk Management

When you use the Disk Management console to shrink the volume in which the Operation System is installed, you’re unable to choose a value (to shrink) beyond a limit. In the shrink volume dialog, the following message is displayed:

You cannot shrink a volume beyond the point where any unmovable files are located. See the "defrag" event in the Application log for detailed information about the operation when it has completed.

If you use the diskpart’s “shrink desired” command-line to shrink the partition via Command Prompt, the following error may be shown even though the partition has ample disk space:

Virtual Disk Service error:
The specified shrink size is too big and will cause the volume to be 
smaller than the minimum volume size.

When you look at the Application event log, Event ID: 259 “defrag” event may show something this:

Event ID: 259 – Examples

A volume shrink analysis was initiated on volume OS (C:). This event log entry details information about the last unmovable file that could limit the maximum number of reclaimable bytes.
 
 Diagnostic details:
 - The last unmovable file appears to be: \pagefile.sys::$DATA
 - The last cluster of the file is: 0x749141f
 - Shrink potential target (LCN address): 0x9b6c2f
 - The NTFS file flags are: P---D
 - Shrink phase: 
 
 To find more details about this file please use the "fsutil volume querycluster \\?\Volume{2eeff2ba-3c96-4389-a407-6461354e612a} 0x749141f" command.

(or)

A volume shrink analysis was initiated on volume OS (C:). This event log entry details information about the last unmovable file that could limit the maximum number of reclaimable bytes.
 
 Diagnostic details:
 - The last unmovable file appears to be: \System Volume Information\{cead75c9-21e3-11ef-b9e4-cc96e535c78c}{3808876b-c176-4e48-b7ae-04046e6cc752}::$DATA
 - The last cluster of the file is: 0x189ac13
 - Shrink potential target (LCN address): 0x1231a79
 - The NTFS file flags are: ---AD
 - Shrink phase: 
 
 To find more details about this file please use the "fsutil volume querycluster \\?\Volume{73033618-7179-458a-b854-bf5c6244b858} 0x189ac13" command.

Event ID: 261 – Examples

Error: a file blocked volume shrink on volume (C:).
 
 Diagnostic details:
 - The last unmovable file appears to be: \pagefile.sys::$DATA
 - The last cluster of the file is: 0x74488cb
 - Shrink potential target (LCN address): 0x743a7be
 - The NTFS file flags are: P---D
 - Shrink phase: 
 
 To find more details about this file please use the "fsutil volume querycluster \\?\Volume{2eeff2ba-3c96-4389-a407-6461354e612a} 0x749141f" command.

The last unmovable file appears to be: \$Extend\$UsnJrnl:$J:$DATA
 - The last cluster of the file is: 0xe635f87
 - Shrink potential target (LCN address): 0xafd8c74
 - The NTFS file flags are: P---D
 - Shrink phase: 

Event ID: 264 – Example

The storage optimizer couldn't complete shrink on (C:) because: This shrink size specified is too big. (0x89000021)

(Go to the Solution directly.)

Cause

It’s usually pagefile.sys that prevents Disk Management from shrinking the volume beyond a point, as pagefile.sys is an unmovable file. Other unmovable files include hiberfil.sys hibernation file.

[50 GB occupied by data] | [50 GB free space] | [pagefile.sys (unmovable)] | [10 GB free space]

The last unmovable file appears to be: \$BitMap::$DATA

The last unmovable file appears to be: \$Extend\$UsnJrnl

This article tells you how to shrink your system partition to your preferred size.

Resolution

My Dell Vostro computer comes with a single partition. When I attempted to shrink the partition so that I can create a second partition out of the free or unallocated space, I could shrink the 940 GB drive only by 50% approximately. Here is the max possible shrink size the Disk Management dialog offered me:

The fix is to temporarily disable hibernation, the Paging file, as well as the System Restore feature. Once disabled these features, restart Windows and resize (shrink) the volume using Disk Management.

Disable System Restore

1. Launch systempropertiesprotection.exe from the Run dialog
2. Select the system drive and click Configure
   
3. Click Disable system protection.
4. Click “Delete“.
5. Click Continue when you see the prompt:

   System Protection
   
   You will not be able to undo unwanted system changes on this drive. Are you sure you want to continue?
   
   This will delete all restore points on this drive. This might include older system image backups.
   
   [Continue] [Cancel]

6. click OK, OK to close the dialogs.

This turns off System Restore and also erases all the restore points.

Disable the hibernation feature

1. Open Command Prompt as administrator
2. Run the following command:

   powercfg /hibernate off

This turns off the hibernate feature and clears the hiberfil.sys from the system drive.

Disable the Paging file

1. Launch systempropertiesadvanced.exe from the Run dialog.
2. Under Performance, click Settings, click Advanced button
3. Click the Change button.
4. Uncheck Automatically manage paging file size for all drives
5. Select No paging file, and click Set
   
6. Click OK.
7. You’ll see the following warning message after you click OK.

   If you disable the paging file or set the initial size to less than 200 megabytes and a system error occurs, Windows might not record details that could help identify the problem. Do you want to continue?

   Click Yes to continue.

8. Restart Windows
9. Open Disk Management and attempt to shrink the system volume. Now you should be able to shrink the drive to the required size as you want.After disabling paging, hibernation and System Restore, I’m now able to shrink the drive by 95% as seen in the above screenshot. The remaining 5% disk space is consumed by the OS, your personal data and other overheads. I could successfully partition the C: drive, reducing its size to 150 GB which is what I wanted.

Re-enable System Restore, Paging file and Hibernate features

After you shrink the volume, be sure to re-enable the Paging file and System Restore and Hibernate options by reversing the earlier steps.

Enable System Restore

1. Launch systempropertiesprotection.exe from the Run dialog
2. Select the system drive and click Configure
3. Click Turn on system protection, click OK, OK.

This turns on System Restore.

Enable Hibernation

1. Open Command Prompt as administrator
2. Run the following command:

   powercfg /hibernate on

This turns on the hibernate feature. As a side note, Fast Startup depends upon the Hibernate feature to work.

Note: If you run the command from a normal (non-elevated) Command Prompt, you’ll see the error Unable to perform operation. An unexpected error (0x65b) has occurred: Function failed during execution when turning off/on hibernation.

Enable the Paging file

1. Launch systempropertiesadvanced.exe from the Run dialog.
2. Under Performance, click Settings, click Advanced button
3. Click the Change button.
4. Select the system drive, click System managed size, and click Set
   
5. Enable Automatically manage paging file size for all drives
6. Click OK.
7. Restart Windows

Defrag or Reset the UsnJrnl

Defragment the UsnJrnl using Contig.exe or rebuild the UsnJrnl if you see the following error in the Event log.

The last unmovable file appears to be: \$Extend\$UsnJrnl

1. Download Contig: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/contig
2. Move Contig.exe to a folder — e.g., C:\Tools.
3. Run this from admin Command Prompt:

   For example, to defrag the UsnJrnl on Drive D, run:

   C:\Tools\contig -v -s D:\$Extend

See if that increases the shrink space on volume D.

If that doesn’t help, delete the UsnJrnl and rebuild it. To do so, run these commands:

Delete and rebuild UsnJrnl

fsutil usn deletejournal /d 

Example:

fsutil usn deletejournal /d d:

fsutil usn queryjournal d:

From the official documentation – fsutil usn | Microsoft Learn

* * *
Deleting or disabling an active change journal is very time consuming, because the system must access all the records in the master file table (MFT) and set the last USN attribute to 0 (zero). This process can take several minutes, and it can continue after the system restarts, if a restart is necessary. During this process, the change journal is not considered active, nor is it disabled. While the system is disabling the journal, it cannot be accessed, and all journal operations return errors. You should use extreme care when disabling an active journal, because it adversely affects other applications that are using the journal.
* * *

So, restart the system after issuing the delete command. You may have to rebuild the index if Windows Search reports stale data.

To rebuild the UsnJournal on the D drive after restarting Windows, run:

fsutil usn createjournal d:

Alternatively, you may try AOMEI or another third-party tool to shrink the partition.

I hope this article helped you shrink your system volume as required.