Windows 7: Drive partition no longer has delete option available - it WAS there

Hi there

I really need some help.
My laptop hard drive arrived with it's disk partitioned left to right as per below :

1) no name - primary
16GB

2) C: drive - system,boot, active, crash dump,primary
approx 80GB and now has 3.16 GB free

3) D: drive - page file, logical
approx 207GB and now has 172 GB free

The other day I was able to see that the "delete partition" option for the D: drive was available.

The C: drive then got VERY low on disk space (down to 100's of MBs) after an auto update so I ran the Windows disk cleanup which came up and regained 3GB. Since then - in preparation for deleting the D: drive partition and expanding the C: drive partition - I have backed up the D: drive, made a Windows image of the C: drive and created a repair disk.

Now the "delete partition" is not available on the D: drive .
I only have "shrink volume" available.

Does anyone know why this has happened ? Has the page file got anything to do with it, and if so, how do I fix ?

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to Seven Forums, Catchup.

Presumably you are seeing the Drives in Disk Management. Could you please post a screenshot of the Hard Disk.

To my mind there are several issues. The No Name Primary Partition is way too large for System Reserved Partition. Looks more like a partition to restore Windows. The C drive has filled up to 77 gigabytes with what. 80 gigabytes should be adequate for system volume with all the other programs when you have the D drive to store your data. Why do you want to delete the D partition? Normally resizing it to a smaller size and merging the resultant space in C Drive should serve the purpose.

At present please don't tinker with the partitions in a hurry unless you are very sure of what you are doing.

Hi Wanchoo
I'll post a screenshot when I find out how - and I have partly solved my problem but come up with another.
The fact that the pagefile.sys was on the D: drive partition was the reason the "delete partition" option was greyed out when I tried to delete the D: drive partition. I have since moved the pagefile.sys back to the C: drive partition and I was then able to delete the D: drive partition. I didn't reboot (should I have ?).

Then I find out that I cannot extend the C: drive partition - that option is greyed out.

The D: drive partition had another "Delete Partition" available but when I selected it, the message I got was that that area of disk would become UNavailable so I have simply recreated the D: drive partition again using the wizrd until I get some better information about what to do.

FYI - I checked some of the other discussions and it seemed like "merging" was not an option ? My understanding was that you had to delete the partition to the right and then extend into it from the left.

I'm back to square one I think.

Cheers

Create a HDD image BEFORE proceeding.

Some tutorial links:
Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup
Imaging with free Macrium

If you have backed up everything, you should be able to:

• Delete D:
• Expand C:
• Recreate D:

Hello Catchup,

From the screenshot it is seen that the No Name Partition is totally empty. You should be able to delete it and then merge it with the C Drive. C Drive shall then become 74.52+16.60=91.12 gigabytes. This should tide you over the difficulty of having very little free space in C drive. Once you have done this we shall have a look at D Drive for more space.

But before you do this please use a third party partitioning tool like Partition Wizard (free) or Acronis Disk Director Suite (shareware) and get out of Windows Disk Management Tool. You can read all about the Partition Wizard in this Forums' Tutorials at Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD.

Best of luck,

Amarnath Wanchoo

I think that it might be saying "empty", because it doesn't recognise the file system.

It doesn't recognise Ubuntu on my PC and reports the partition as "empty".

How did that page file get there. My guess is that this is the impediment.

I think OP would have mentioned in the original message if there was something there. Anyway the OP should know what is there. Apparently he is not using whatever that is there.

This 16.6GB partition is the recovery partition. It can be deleted once the recovery DVDs have been burnt. But I would anyhow make images as backup.

Just wondering why this partition is No Name because in all the computers that I have come across so far, Recovery Partitions have carried a drive letter and Windows is able to see how much the partition is occupied and the files contained therein. To me there seems to be more than meets the eye.