There is not enough usable space, Diskpart Virtual Disk Service error

While creating a partition on a hard disk by using the Diskpart utility, some users encountered the error “There is not enough usable space for this operation.” According to the error message, you are unable to create a new partition because of the lack of usable space on your hard disk. In this article, we will see how to deal with this error to get the issue fixed.

The complete error message displayed by the Diskpart utility could be either of the two:

There is not enough usable space on specified disks to extend the volume

There is not enough usable space for this operation

Diskpart Virtual Disk Service error, There is not enough usable space

If Diskpart is showing the “Virtual Disk Service error: There is not enough usable space for this operation” while creating a new partition, the following solutions may help you fix the problem:

Check the partition style of your Disk
Rescan your disk
Shrink the partition on your hard drive
Use a third-party tool

1] Check the partition style of your disk

One possible cause of this error is the limitation of an MBR disk. If the disk installed on your system uses the Master Boot Record, you will not create more than 4 partitions on your disk. Whereas, in the GPT partition, there is no such limit. You can create unlimited partitions on a GPT disk, but Windows allows only up to 128 partitions on a GPT disk.

Check the partition style of your hard disk. To do so, follow the steps below:

Launch the Run command box.
Type diskmgmt.msc and click OK.
The above command will open the Disk Management tool.
Right-click on your hard disk and select Properties.
Select the Volumes tab. You will see the partition style of your hard disk.

If the partition style of your hard disk is MBR and you already have 4 partitions on it, you have to convert it into GPT to create more partitions. Do note that the conversion is possible only if the hard disk contains no partitions or volumes. If your hard disk contains any partitions, you have to delete them before converting MBR into GPT. This action will also erase all the data on your hard disk. That’s why we suggest you backup all your data on an external hard disk.

The GPT disks use Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) BIOS mode. You can check your BIOS mode in the System Information. If your BIOS supports both legacy and UEFI modes but it is set to the legacy mode, you can convert it to UEFI.

After converting your hard disk from MBR to GPT, check if the Diskpart is showing the same error while creating partitions.

2] Rescan your disk

The Rescan command helps you detect new disks added to your computer. When you run this command, it detects the configuration changes on your hard disk and updates the information. You can try running this command in Diskpart and see if it helps. Follow the steps below:

Open Command Prompt as an administrator.
Type Diskpart and press Enter.
Type Rescan and press Enter.

After rescanning your disks, check if the issue persists.

3] Shrink the partition on your hard drive

According to the error, your disk does not have enough usable space. To fix this problem, you can shrink a partition to leave unallocated space. After shrinking the partition, you should be able to create a new partition. The steps to do this are written below:

Open Command Prompt as an administrator.
Type Diskpart.
Type select disk #. Replace # with the disk number. For example, if you want to create a partition on disk 0, you have to type select disk 0 and press Enter.
Now, you have to select the partition on your hard disk which you want to shrink. For this, type list par and press Enter. This command will list all the partitions on your hard disk.
Now, type sel par #. Replace # with the partition number on your hard disk. After selecting a particular partition, say, partition 3, you will see a message “Partition 3 is now the selected partition.”
Type shrink desired=size minimum=size. After that hit Enter. Replace the string size in the command with the actual size on the disk that you want to shrink. The size that you enter to shrink the volume should be less than the total size of the selected partition. For example, if the total size of the selected partition is 16 GB, the size to shrink the partition should be less than 16 GB.
After the above command is executed successfully, a partition with unallocated space will be created. You can view this unallocated space in Disk Management.
To make the unallocated space usable, you have to format it. Type fs=ntfs quick and press Enter.
Wait till the formatting process gets completed.

After the formatting gets completed, a partition of the desired size is created. In step 6 above, we have used the command shrink desired=size minimum=size. This command consists of two values, namely, desired and minimum. Let’s see the meaning and purpose of each of these values.

Desired: This represents the actual amount of space that you want on your partition.
Minimum: It represents the minimum space on the selected partition.

If the size entered in the desired value is not possible to create, Windows will create the partition of the size that you enter in the minimum value. You can also enter the same size in both of these values.

Read: Diskpart error, The device does not recognize the command.

4] Use a third-party tool

You can also use a third-party tool to create partitions on your hard drive. If you search online, you will find many disk and partition manager tools that come with both free and paid plans.

UPDATE: Microsoft is removing the 32GB size limit for FAT32 partitions from the format command line in Windows 11. Although FAT supports volumes up to 2TB, Windows has a 32GB limit in place.

Related:

Diskpart Virtual Disk Service Error: The service failed to initialize
Diskpart Virtual Disk Service error. The operation timed out
Diskpart Virtual Disk Service Error, The volume size is too big
Diskpart Virtual Disk Service error, The file system is incompatible
Diskpart Virtual Disk Service error. Delete is not allowed on the current boot, system, pagefile, crashdump or hibernation volume
Diskpart Virtual Disk Service error, The operation is not supported by the object
Diskpart Virtual Disk Service error, The specified disk is not convertible

How do you fix the virtual disk service error the specified disk is not convertible?

You may see an error message “The specified disk is not convertible” while converting an MBR disk into GPT by using the Diskpart utility. The complete error message is:

Virtual Disk Service error:
The specified disk is not convertible.

According to the error message, the disk you want to convert from MBR into GPT is not convertible. To fix this error, you should know what an MBR partition style is and what a GPT partition style is. If you want to convert an MBR disc into a GPT, your BIOS should support the UEFI mode. This is because the GPT disks use Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) BIOS mode.

If you are getting this error message, first check your system’s BIOS mode. If it shows legacy mode, convert it into the UEFI mode. To know the BIOS mode, click on Windows Search and type System Information, then select the System Information app from the search results. In the System Information app, you will see your BIOS made on the right pane.

If your BIOS supports both legacy and UEFI modes, you will be able to convert legacy to UEFI. If your BIOS mode is already set to UEFI, but you are still getting this error message, you can use a third-party tool or software, like Minitool partition wizard to convert MBR to GPT.

Read: DiskPart error, Data error Cyclic redundancy check.

How do I fix the virtual disk service error volume size is too big?

The virtual disk service error volume size is too big usually occurs when you format a particular disk drive by using a FAT32 file system. In such a case, you can try another file system to format the disk drive, like NTFS. There are several limitations of the FAT32 file system. The maximum file size limit for the FAT32 file system is 4 GB. This is the reason why Diskpart displays this error while formatting a disk drive of large size by using the FAT32 file system.