Windows 7 - Disk management tool won't allow new simple volume, no obvious reason.

fox2 · 02-08-2012

I'm trying to create a new simple volume in 130 GB free disk space. There's no obvious reason why it would refuse to do so - I'm not at the hard limit on number of partitions or anything - but disk management MSC is consistently returning "Not enough space" errors.

The only thing I can think of is something to do with the partition order, but if so I have no idea how to fix it non-destructively. I'm in the middle of backups on it, so deleting partitions is a no-go. At the moment I don't understand what's going on.

DISKPART output (Win 7 x64):

Code:

DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          232 GB   134 GB

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Primary             43 GB  1024 KB
  Partition 0    Extended           188 GB    43 GB
  Partition 2    Logical             54 GB   178 GB

DISKPART> list volume

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     E                       DVD-ROM         0 B  No Media
  Volume 1     C   SYSTEM W     NTFS   Partition     43 GB  Healthy    System
  Volume 2     D   DATA         NTFS   Partition     54 GB  Healthy

The disk structure is: (1) primary partition/system volume 43GB, (2) extended partition 190GB containing 136GB contiguous blank space and 54GB logical drive.

I have no idea what Windows is complaining about or how to fix it. The disk is good and the volumes good too, so I'm guessing it's got to be related to the partition table but what's the reason and how to fix it?

DeaconFrost · 02-08-2012

Post a screenshot of the Disk Management snap-in. If it was me, I'd nix all the extended partitions completely, and also keep it to two total partitions. One primary for C and one primary for D. I have always used primary so they have no links or ties to each other.

Windows 7 - Disk management tool won't allow new simple volume, no obvious reason.

Disk management tool won't allow new simple volume, no obvious reason. problems?