AOMEI Partition Assistant
Can I Use Diskpart to Shrink Partition in Windows Server 2003?
It is not available to use Diskpart to shrink partition in Server 2003. Then, what how can you to shrink partition in Windows Server 2003? Don’t worry and a third party partition manager can be helpful!
By Bryce / Updated on December 4, 2024
Can I shrink partition via Diskpart in Server 2003?
In Windows Server 2003, my hard drive is originally allocated with one partition (Partition C). Now I want to create more partitions to save my files separately. I decide to shrink C drive to get unallocated space in Disk Management, but only find that there is no Shrink Volume Partition. Then, is it possible to use Diskpart utility to shrink partition in Windows Server 2003? If not, what should I do?”
The answer is negative
Diskpart is a command-line tool. In Windows Server 2003, you can use it to mark partition as active, assign drive letter, create partition, delete partition, and so on, but not for shrinking partition, as there is no shrink command listed in Windows Server 2003 Diskpart utility. To reduce partition size in Server 2003, you can turn to third-party software. If you are running Windows Server 2025/2022/2019/2016/2012, or 2025, you can use it to shrink partition via Diskpart through the following steps:
1. Press “Windows” + “R” at the same time, input “cmd” to run Command Prompt as Administrator.
2. Input “diskpart” to run Diskpart and run the following commands”
● list disk
● select disk m
● list partition
● select partition n
● shrink desired=size
Notes: “m” stands for the number of the disk that contains the partition that will be shrunk; “n” is the number of the volume that you want to shrink; and the unit of size is MB.
3. After shrinking partition, you can type "exit" and hit Enter to close this window.
✍Tips:
◆ However, in Server 2025/2022/2019/2016/2012, Diskpart won’t allow you to shrink partition that is not formatted with NTFS file system; when you shrink NTFS partition, there are chances that you can’t shrink partition via Diskpart and will be warned by an error message.
◆ The shrink failure can be caused by unmovable files (like paging files), bad clusters, or something else. To shrink partition, you need to take measures accordingly. The process can be complicated and bothering.
How to shrink partition in Windows Server 2003 successfully?
Since you can’t use Disk Management or Diskpart to shrink partition in Windows Server 2003, it will be a nice choice to turn to a third-party partition manager for Windows Server, AOMEI Partition Assistant Server. It can shrink partition in Windows Server 2003, resize BitLocker partition, and extend partition effortlessly. And the software is featured with many other functions, such as converting MBR to GPT, cloning disk, etc. It is available to free download its demo version to have a try at first!
1. Run the software and right-click the partition that you want to shrink and choose Resize/Move Partition.
2. In the pop-up window, drag the double-head arrow leftwards to decrease the partition size and click OK.
3. You’ll be back to the main console, click Apply, and Proceed to execute the operation.
Notices:
1. If you shrink system partition, shrink a partition where has some running space, shrink a partition that contains AOMEI Partition Assistant Server installation or page file, operation will be performed under PreOS mode.
2. This software can work under Windows Server 2025, 2022, 2019, 2016, 2012 (R2).
