0 Shrink Space on Windows 10 C:

Question

I got a DTG printer that's been fighting me. After following instructions from tech support I've hit a wall. I've been asked to create a D drive with 50GB of space for the printing program.
I have 446GB of storage on an SSD.
I currently have (C:) 48%Free (216.91GB) ; (Disk 0 partition 3) 100%Free (854MB); System Reserved 61% Free.
I cannot make a D drive because somewhere there is already one. I cannot find the D drive to change it's name or remove it.
My wife said she took space from Disk 0 to create an E drive but could only steal 16MB.
Instructions on taking from C drive say to hit Format. Format is greyed out. Below it is Shrink which is what I want anyway.
Total size before shrink in MB: 456911
Size of available shrink space in MB: 0
I tried what other answers suggest. Run defrag and Turn off Protection. I'm still at 0 shrink space.
I tried the No Paging File + Check root of C: with hidden files showing + Defrag. It freed up 34794MB which still isn't enough. There aren't any suspicious items anywhere in the hidden folders I can access.
The system tells me if there isn't enough space to open Shrink Help. Nothing on the Microsoft Help page works, nor is it even relevant to the situation. Forum answers have gotten me closer but not enough.
I reset all the protections I just undid to make sure I don't screw up my cpu.

I'm not a tech guy. Is there a solution that doesn't involve dismantling my cpu to test on another computer? A semi-simple way to somehow find what the hell is eating up and/or blocking 200GB of space for no reason? As a last resort possibly adding another SSD to my CPU that can be dedicated to the printer program? A way to find the hidden D drive and rename it? (I have tried adding a hard drive to a previous computer for extra storage and it wound up fighting the current hard drive for dominance. Something so simple I managed to screw up. This tells you where I am at technologically.)

Answer 1

If you're not a tech guy as you say, then I'd suggest trying to find a friend or neighbor who has more experience who can help you.

I would not mess with the C drive. Even if you could shrink it, you will regret that at some point when you want to install something and you don't have enough free space.

I would be asking tech support for an explanation about why I need a D: drive. You should be able to use the C: drive. If you can post the explanation they gave you, I'm sure that someone on the forum can tell you if that makes sense or if they are giving you the runaround because they don't know what they are doing.

The D drive should show up in explorer under My PC. It might be a mapped network drive. If it doesn't show up there, open an admin command prompt do a "dir d:\" and see what's there. UAC could be involved.

I am using a laptop and I needed more space for VM's that I play with. This laptop had a SD card slot so I just bought a 128 gb one. It won't be as fast as an SSD but it's good enough and was an easy solution for a laptop. Buy the largest card that your pc will support. (If you have an SD slot.)

I also have a 4TB external USB hard drive that is connected to my desktop. I use it for backup for both pc's. A USB drive should be cheaper than an SSD. And you can just plug it in to a USB slot as opposed to taking the case apart to add an SSD. Buy a big one and format it into multiple partitions, 50gb for the print program, another partition for your wife's E drive, and use the rest as storage.