How to get back partition created from C Drive to unallocated space?

Hi..
I recently bought a new laptop 500 GB hard drive, which had C:, Recovery (D: ), and HP Tools (E: ) drive. I thought of creating a sepreate drive to keep personal stuff like pics, songs, etc.

I went to disk management, and clicked on "Shrink Volume" on C: Drive. Now an unallocated parition has been created, which I cannot see in "My Computer" and moreover the size of C: drive is also showing as reduced size.

Please help me to create a new drive from that unallocated space or get back the original C: Drive.

Please help me with layman's terms as I am not so familiar with computer terms.

Thanks in advance.

Please find attached the screen shot of the disk management.

Suchithareja said:

Hi..
I recently bought a new laptop 500 GB hard drive, which had C:, Recovery (D: ), and HP Tools (E: ) drive. I thought of creating a sepreate drive to keep personal stuff like pics, songs, etc.

I went to disk management, and clicked on "Shrink Volume" on C: Drive. Now an unallocated parition has been created, which I cannot see in "My Computer" and moreover the size of C: drive is also showing as reduced size.

Please help me to create a new drive from that unallocated space or get back the original C: Drive.

Please help me with layman's terms as I am not so familiar with computer terms.

Thanks in advance.

Welcome to the forum,

Here is a tutorial with pictures that will show you how to finish creating your new partition,

Partition or Volume - Create New

Hi..Thank you so much for the prompt reply. It was very helpful.

But, as mentioned in the tutorial, I got a pop-up saying "The operation selected will convert the disk to dynamic... are you sure you want to continue?"...to which i clicked NO.

Now the unallocated space is where it was. Please help. Thanks.

derekimo said:

Welcome to the forum,

Here is a tutorial with pictures that will show you how to finish creating your new partition,

Partition or Volume - Create New

Hi Kari,

Thank you so much for the information. I really want to thank you. It was really helpful.

But in the process....I just thought of extending the C: Drive (I did this after a lot of reading, unlike shrinking the volume)....and to my surprise the unallocated space was merged with the C: Drive back. I am so happy now :)

now my question is.....Can i use C: Drive to store all my personal stuff? as in will it not get heavy and slow my laptop?

Suchi

yes, i do make a copy of the data i store in my laptop in my external hard disk.

I want to again check with you....can i permanently delete the recovery drive after creating a recovery disk? and there would not be any problem in running the laptop in future?

And later if i want to restore my laptop or any data, i can use the disk (that i created on a DVD) without it being there on my laptop?


Suchi

kado897 said:

The biggest problem with storing your data on the C drive is that it will make your system images much larger. You do make backup images I hope.

Thank you for the valuable information.

I think i will go without deleting the recovering partition. My storage use of laptop is limited to storing pics, videos and music, which i'l do in C: Drive only. In any case, I will prepare a recovery disk, and also keep a back-up of my data regularly.

I am not so familiar with the computer terms, installtions and other such things. So, I dont think i'l be in a position to deal with the complicated procedure using an OEM live CD you are refering to Thanks for mentioning it though. :)

whs said:

If you are certain that your recovery discs work, you can delete the recovery partition. But in any case I would suggest that you take an extra image of your C partition and your System partition (the little hidden 100MB partition) now so that you have an extra safety net. Use this free program: Imaging with free Macrium

But in any case, you can only create an additional partition if you have no more than 3 primary partitions. There are ways to get to this state in your current configuration (keeping the recovery partition) - but that is a somewhat complicated procedure using an OEM live CD. If you are interested, post back and we'll explain.