The new Windows 7 Disk Management tool provides you with a very simple interface for managing and adjusting partitions and volumes on your Windows computer. This tip will provide you with a easy way to shrink a Windows volume to free up hard disk space so you may create a new partition on your drive.
To shrink down a basic volume on your hard disk, or a spanned volume;
1. Open the Disk Management console by typing diskmgmt.msc at an elevated command prompt.
2. In Disk Management right-click on the volume that you want to shrink and then click on Shrink Volume.
3. In the field provided in the shrink dialog box enter the amount of space by which to shrink the disk.
In the Shrink dialog box there will be the following information:
Total size before shrieking in MB Will list the total capacity of the volume in MB. This is the formatted size of the volume.
Size of Available Shrink space in MB Will list the maximum amount by which you can shrink the volume. This doesn’t represent the total amount of free space on the volume, rather it represents the amount of space that can be removed, not including any data reserved for the Master file table, volume snapshot, page files, and other temporary files.
Enter The Amount of Space to Shrink in MB Will list the total amount of space that will be removed from the volume. The initial volume devotes to the maximum amount of space that can be removed from the volume. For optimal drive performance should ensure that the volume has at least 10% of free space after the shrink operation.
Total size after shrink in MB Will list that a total capacity of the volume in MB will be after you shrink the volume. This is a new formatted size of the volume.
4. Click on shrink.
Now that you have unallocated disk space, you can use that space to create a new partition on your drive.