usual disclaimer: presented as information only. Use at your own discretion. Not responsible if you screw up your system and neglected to BACK UP.
I decided I needed a 10 GB partition of my hard drive for temporary backup of some files. There are third party utilities that you can use in this case but I decided to use Windows built in options.
First I clicked on Start and then right clicked on Computer (this is for Win 7) and then Manage. Then In the Computer management window I clicked on Disk Management (down left hand side). My hard drive is labeled Disk 0 so in the graphic towards the bottom I right clicked on the Acer (C:) section and then clicked on Shrink Volume.
But no surprise, I had issues. A little message came up Querying volume for available shrink space wait... , so far so good.
But I got an error message saying the Virtual Disk service wasn't started. So I went to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services > found the Virtual Disk. It was set to manual startup and not started so I set it to Automatic and then started it up. So then I went back to Disk Management and tried again. Now it couldn't access the RCP server. The RCP service is one service that you cannot stop or start or even restart. So online I went and discovered I also needed the Disk Defragmenter service running.
Tried again. This time I got to a new Shrink window pop up but I realized that according to this window I had no space to create a new drive. I have a 500 GB hard drive with 365 GB free. I typed in 10,000 to see what happened but the shrink button remained unclickable. An online search suggested that Windows may have place some files at the end of the drive and defragging might clear it up.
So, I opened my favourite defrag program, Auslogics Disk Defrag - http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/
Right away after the program finished loading I noticed the gray string of blocks indicating unmovable files. Clicking on one revealed it to be my paging file. So, I could easily disable it until I finished this up. Start > Control panel > System > Advanced system settings > Performance (Settings) > Advanced tab > Vitual memory (Change...) > Click on No paging file and then Set. I had to restart my computer.
Start > Right click - Manage > Disk Management > Right click - Shrink Volume > Querying > and:
So I typed in 10,000 for roughly 10 GB and clicked on the Shrink button. An finally I had 9.77 GB of Unallocated space.
Then I right clicked on the Unallocated space and clicked on New Simple Volume... and the New Simple Volume Wizard popped up. Next > I had to assign a drive letter, I left it on E. > Then format
I left everything on the defaults except changing the volume label to backup and the end result...
It seems that I always have to take a few extra steps to get things done. I would think I was cursed but I don't believe in curses. I would think I was being tested by God but I'm an Atheist and don't believe in God. I guess I can still swear on Microsoft, cartoon style - $%#@&&* Microsoft. That felt good. :-)