TreeSize

The Powerful Disk Space Management Software

A Partition Ran Full of Data - Do I Need a Partition Manager to Change the Size of the Volume?

First things first: Is it really necessary to start a free partition manager and resize the system partition? Changing the size of a partition - e.g. with disk partition software - is a serious modification of your system. Before you start to extend volumes, it might be wise to check whether removing space hogs from your hard disk can help you free up hard disk space.

But how do I clean up a partition? There are several different ways:

Use NTFS compression, for example with TreeSize:

  • An NTFS compression is entirely transparent and works in the background. Applications accessing files will never notice that they are compressed. You can open and modify compressed files just like their uncompressed counterparts.
  • Caution: the amount of freed disk space depends on the file type. Some formats such as JPG, DOCX or video files are already compressed, thus the amount of freed up disk space may only be around 5 to 20 %. In case of uncompressed formats such as text or HTML-files, however, you may save up to 40 to 60 %. TreeSize Professional offers one-click compression and decompression of whole directory trees via the context menu.

Delete temporary files:

  • Temporary files (short: "temp files") or obsolete files can accumulate and block vast amounts of disk space. The TreeSize Professional temporary file search helps you find and delete, move or archive this kind of space hogs.

Find duplicate files and remove them:

  • Duplicates can be created by accident and often remain undetected on your hard drives, cluttering up partitions. The TreeSize duplicate file search makes sure you find duplicates and even allows deduplication via hardlinks.

Look for old and big files:

Cleaning up partitions did not help? Then it's time to resize your windows partitions. This is how it's done:

You require an additional partition - but all hard disk space is allocated to the existing partitions.

Use the Windows partition manager and change the size of partitions:

  • Most importantly: be sure to save your data before you start resizing the partitions!
  • Open the Windows Explorer.
  • Right-click on My Computer and klick on Manage.
  • Klick on Storage, then on Disk Management.
  • After right-clicking on the partition you want to manage choose between:
    • Extend volume
    • Shrink volume
  • Enter the size you want to shrink or expand the partition and press enter: you're done!

 

If there is no non-allocated disc space on the hard disk you will need to use your disk partition software to shrink other partitions. But what do I need to extend a partition? It's simple: disk space. Our recommendation: use TreeSize to delete or compress obsolete files and free up disk space.