Unable to shrink disk volume past half the disk - newly installed 2012 on DL380 Gen8

[TomSimeone]

I used Intelligent Provisioning to install Windows Server 2012 Standard on a brand new DL380 Gen8 with 5 SAS 300GB Drives configured in a RAID5 array with the fifth as a hot spare.  During the installation, the OS installed on Drive C using all the available disk space.  Now I am trying to shrink the volume but it will only shrink to 419.16GB.  I cannot find any unmoveable files on the C drive other than a 4GB pagefile.  Any idea why this is happening?

Our normal config is a 100GB C, 100GB D and the remainder designated as an E Drive.  This is not a problem on our Dell or our DL380 G7 servers although those commonly use the 500GB SAS drives (3 drive array + hot spare)

[Roger Faucher]

I would try Optimize and Defrag drive, then remove the swap file (may require a reboot) and retry shrinking. Let us know the results. Thanks.

[KarlB]

I ran into this problem the other day.   There is a fix.  here is the Email summary i sent to my coworkers:

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I  ran into this and thought maybe it would be useful to share it.

When you use the integrated f10 setup on a new HP server to install the server OS for you, it makes the C: drive the full size of whatever your first available disk is.    So if you have a RAID 10 array that is 500GB, it will make a single 500GB C: partition for you.

So what if you wanted only a 100GB C: drive and a 400GB D: drive on that RAID 10 array instead?

You can use the disk manager in server 2012 to shrink the volume (C:)  to make it smaller.  However, there is a catch.  You can only shrink the volume by 50%.  It will not go any further because of the unmovable MFT tables and other system files that are on the disk at the end.     So this of course is a problem if you wanted the 100GB/400GB setup mentioned earlier.

The solution is to download a trial of PerfectDisk for Servers.   You can get it here: http://ftp.raxco.com/pub/download/pd12.5/pd12.5_svr.exe

Once you install it, open it and select the C: drive.  Then click the drop down arrow on the start button and choose “Prep for Shrink”

Once the defrag is done,  you are still not ready for the shrink.  There are unmovable files that must be moved still and they can only be moved during a reboot.   So now you need to do a boot time defrag.

On the Defragmentation tab, hit the "boot time defrag" button and proceed with the reboot and the defrag.   When you do,  you will find the unmovable MFT files have been moved approximatley 50% of what way thru the free space on the disk.  You can now use the disk manager to shrink the partition another 50% or more.    Repeating this process will allow you to shrink the disk as far as you need to.   When you are done, uninstall the trial of PerfectDisk.

BTW, I tried several other disk defragmenters that also support boot time defrag.  I can confirm that Defraggler, SysInternals, and GlaryUtilities all support boot time defrag but do not work for this process.  The google helped me find this article and it is where I found out about perfectdisk.   http://www.undermyhat.org/blog/2010/08/tip-how-to-shrink-a-volume-beyond-half-its-size-using-diskpart-or-disk-manager/

Karl

[sparkymarcopolo]

I used Gparted on a bootable USB to shrink having come across this very issue. It was seemless.

[Roger Faucher]

New PerfectDisk 13 (Windows 8.1-compliant) link: http://www.raxco.com/home/products/perfectdisk-pro. Click on Start Free Trial button.