Does shrinking volume involves actually moving files to the 'top' to make new unallocated space? windows disk management does that with disk defrag utility. I also heard 3rd part partion managers can do instantly. which one is safe? i like to shrink an external 2 tb HDD with 200 GB free space, I checked with a defrag tool the files are all over the place, free space is just here and there fragmented. obviously diskmanagement tool will take forever to organize that. can 3rd party tool just shrink those free space bits? how does it work? please anyexpert clarify. i don't want to try anything before that and lose my data.
I never had any issues shrinking A HD to make space using windows utility disk management but u can also use your favorite third party app if u like...as for the best theirs tons of them out their.
Sorry, I don't want to offend you any way, but there is nothing right in your first post. Before you want to do anything at all, make sure you know what the HDD is, what the thing is partition, how many partitions can be done, if there is a GPT system, how many is MBR system. Then what is meant by active partition and what is meant by logical partition. How big can be HDD at all, if is used MBR, if is used GPT Next, what is free space, what Defraggler does, what Partition master or manager does, and many more basic concepts. As long as You don't know main concepts, is not possible do nothing. Once again, I don't want to offend You, but this is the reality - before continue, You should know main things. If You speak about defragging, then about what kind of defragging. You must know such a things like file defragmenting, drive or partition defragmenting (sometimes also defragmenting with optimizing on different ways-there is many different ways) or for example talking about free space defragmenting etc. It all is important if You use HDD and isn't at all important if You use some of different SSD drive types. There is also at least four different basical types.
@John Sutherland thank you for the reply. It is pure data. so the files at the end MUST be moved out to shrink the volume right? I ask this because when i tested with my internal HDD shrinking 2 GB happened instantly. but shrinking 10 GB took infinity, I had to open disk defrag to see it was 0% whole time and cancel it. @kaljukass I think I know enough about them to even attempt this. rather than telling to study the mentioned, you could've just said yes / no to the not so complicated question. you quoted my first lines, but that is not what i asked lecture about HDDs and file systems. I mentioned it was and external HDD with just data. again all i ask is - say you analyse the disk with that defrag tool's colorful map and see those white rectangles which represent free space, are they NEED to be organized at the 'end' of the volume before the utility can 'shrink' that space? I almost thought you are a subtle troll
Thank you for your polite expressions and good compliment. Now you really have 1 question and the answer is - no, not need to do anything, let them stay as they are. Reason - if You will do what ever with this drive, all Your files will be placed to other places. If You want, defrag after all other works are done, but if You said that it is data, it is enough if You run simple file defragmentation and then consolidate free space (sometimes it is called as free space defragmentation). PS. on previous post I used spoiler for purposes to use less page space. This is the meaning of using spoiler.