Partition or Volume - Extend

How to Extend a Partition or Volume in Windows 7​

   Information

This will show you how to extend a hard disk partition or volume into a empty unallocated space on the same hard disk to make it larger using Disk Management or Diskpart in Windows 7.

   Warning

You must be logged on in an administrator account to do this tutorial.

If you disable the Disk Defragmenter service, then you will get the error below when you try to do anything in Disk Management. If you get this error, then make sure that the Disk Defragmenter service is set to only Manual.

OPTION ONE

Using Disk Management

1. If you have not already, you will first need to delete the partition or volume that you want to extend into to make it unallocated space.

2. Open the Control Panel (icons view), and click on the Administrative Tools icon. then close the Control Panel window.

3. Click on Computer Management in Administrative Tools, then close the Administrative Tools window.

4. In the left pane under Storage, click on Disk Management. (See screenshot below)

5. In the middle pane, right click on the partition or volume directly adjacent (left) of the unallocated space that you want to extend into, and click on Extend Volume. (See screenshot above)

6. Click on the Next button. (See screenshot below)

7. Type in how many MB (1 GB = 1024 MB) you want to use from the unallocated space to extend the selected partition (step 5) into, then click on the Next button. (See screenshot below)
NOTE: If you want to use all of the unallocated space to extend into, then type in the maximum available space shown for the unallocated space.

8. Click on the Finish button. (See screenshot below)

9. The partition or volume has now been extended into the assigned unallocted space (step 7). (See screenshot below)

10. Close the Computer Management window. (See screenshot above)

OPTION TWO

Using Diskpart in a Elevated Command Prompt

1. If you have not already, you will first need to delete the partition or volume that you want to extend into to make it unallocated space.

2. Open a elevated command prompt, or a command prompt at boot.

3. In the elevated command prompt, type diskpart and press Enter. (See screenshot below)

4. In the elevated command prompt, type list disk and press Enter. (See screenshot below)
NOTE: This is to help you ID the disk that has Free space that you want to extend into, and to see the disk size to make it easier to ID it's volume number in step 5. For example, Disk 1.

5. In the elevated command prompt, type list volume and press Enter. (See screenshot below)
NOTE: Look for the volume number that has the same Size as from the size in step 4 minus the Free space. For example, Volume 2.

6. In the elevated command prompt, type select volume # and press Enter. (See screenshot below)
NOTE: You would substitute # for the volume number listed that you want to extend. For example, I want to extend the listed volume 2 since, so I would type select volume 2 and press Enter.

7. To Extend into All of the Unallocated Space
A) In the elevated command prompt, type extend and press Enter. (See screenshot below)
NOTE: The unallocated space will be removed and added completely to the selected partiton or volume (step 6).

B) Go to step 9.
8. To Extend into the Unallocated Space by a Specified Size
A) In the elevated command prompt, type extend size=(# in MB) and press Enter.
NOTE: You would substitute (# in MB) for how many MB (1 GB = 1024 MB) you want to use of the unallocated space (free space shown in step 4) to be extended into. For example, if I only wanted to extend into 5 GB of the unallocated space, then I would type extend size=5120 and press Enter.
9. In the elevated command prompt, type exit and press Enter. (See screenshot below)

10. Close the elevated command prompt.

11. The selected partition or volume (step 6) has now been extended into the unallocated space to make it larger.
NOTE: If you did step 8 instead of 7, then you can use the rest of the unallocated space to create a new partition with if you like.
That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• Data Partition
• How to Delete a Partition or Volume in Windows 7
• How to Shrink a Partition or Volume in Windows 7
• How to Create a New Partition or Volume in Windows 7
• How to Create and Attach a Virtual Hard Disk in Windows 7
• How to Unattach and Delete a Virtual Hard Disk in Windows 7
• How to Setup Windows 7 to Boot from a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk)
• How to Fix Missing Vista Hard Disk Partition Letter in Windows 7
• How to Convert a FAT or FAT32 Volume to NTFS in Windows 7
• How to Convert a MBR Disk to a GPT Disk
• How to Convert a GPT Disk to a MBR Disk
• How to Convert a Basic Disk to a Dynamic Disk
• How to Convert a Dynamic Disk to a Basic Disk
• How to Clean or Clean All a Disk with the Diskpart Command
• How to Quick Format a HDD or USB Drive
• How to Mark a Partition as Active in Windows 7
• How to Mark a Partition as Inactive in Windows 7 and Vista

 

[Brink]

Hi. I want to extend my D volume. I have shrank 20 gb from my C volume on which Windows 7 is installed. It is listed as unallocated space.

Now it looks like this;

C, unallocated space (20 gb), D

I have tried "method 2" from the tutorial but it gave an error. It said something like "virtual disk device doesn't have enough memory to perform this operation."

Then I tried two different software (Minitool Partition Wizard, both free home and professional demo, and Paragon Partition Manager 11 Free) extend D with aforementioned unallocated space. With Paragon I can't select the unallocated space when I try to resize D. Minitool can't merge because the volumes to be merged needs to be in NTFS format. In my case unallocated space isn't formatted. I can't format it in anyway since there are already 3 partitions and 1 extended partition in my HDD. D volume is part of the extended drive.

Is it even possible to add this unallocated space to D?

Btw, I'm doing this on my Windows 7 Home Premium netbook.

Hello Eilhart,

Could you post a screenshot of Disk Management showing all of your HDD's layout? This will give us a better understanding of what your options may be.

For now, it appears that you may need to delete D: to be able to have it merged with the unallocated space to the left of it since the unallocated space is not to the right of D: , then create a new partition with the merged unallocated space afterwards.

 

[eilhart]

From left to right;

LG Smart On, C (Windows 7), 20 gb unallocated space, D, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Swap, LG recovery Console

If there is another way than deleting D volume, I could use it.

 

[Brink]

Eilhart,

With Ubuntu in the mix, I'm not sure how this may work if at all. However, you could try using either the "Bootable CD/DVD" or "Bootable USB flash drive" option with Partition Wizard to try and extend/move D: into the unallocated space.

If you get any type of message to convert to a dynamic disk during this, be sure to say NO.

Worst case, you most likely will not be able to, but you should still be able to extend C: back into the unallocated space to add it back to C: .

 

[eilhart]

Thank you. I will add that space back to C. I'm not willing to explore more on this with bootable USB. I am going to install Windows 8 Developer Preview to get a feel of it. I will just shrink D for it I guess and free up some space there if need be.

 

[pootklopp]

removing unallocated space

I have 10GB of unallocated space that I would like to use. Attached is a screen shot of my situation. I just installed windows 7 fresh from vista. I would also like to make new partition for a recovery image of 7. Could I just use the 10gb of unallocated space to do that? And while I am in here partitioning space and what not, would it be a good idea to partition space to do this? ---> http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/72427-data-partition.html

I am new to this aspect of computers so suggestion would be great.

 

[Brink]

Hello Pootklopp, and welcome to Seven Forums.

10GB would not be large enough to keep system image backups on since your Windows 7 partition is using much more than that space already.

If you like you could use the free Partition Wizard program to drag/move the C: partition into the 10GB unallocated space to add it back to the C: drive.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[pootklopp]

how do I do that, do I have to use the payed version? I am new to the all this and do not want to mess anything up haha

 

[Brink]

After you download and install the free version at the link above, you would just run the program and drag the C: drive into the unallocated space.

 

[Dave76]

how do I do that, do I have to use the payed version? I am new to the all this and do not want to mess anything up haha

This Seven Forums tutorial: Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD will help explain how to do this, look at Option Three: Shrink the Left Side of a Windows Partition.

It is the same procedure to shrink or extend. Just move the sliding boundary the other way.

 

[knightyyz]

I must have screwed up. I originally made my c partition much to small. So i shrunk the other part of the same disk by 50gb so i could extend c into that unallocated space. I followed the instructions on the first page and now all the space is gone. It did not get added to the c drive or the original h drive. My 1TB drive only has 930gb space now.

 

[Brink]

I must have screwed up. I originally made my c partition much to small. So i shrunk the other part of the same disk by 50gb so i could extend c into that unallocated space. I followed the instructions on the first page and now all the space is gone. It did not get added to the c drive or the original h drive. My 1TB drive only has 930gb space now.

Hello Knightyyz, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Could you post a screenshot of your Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) window showing all of your HDD's layout? This will give us a better understanding of your situation and what options you may have.

 

[knightyyz]

according to intel rapid storage...

the drive is showing 932 GB but it is really 953,869 so I am missing 30GB +/-

 

[knightyyz]

Ok, I'm an idiot. I could have sworn that before i tried this my hard drive showed "C" as 30gb and the rest was 932 but after trying to increase the 30gb part i ended up with a total of 932. But after searching i found out that windows shows a 1tb drive as 932gb.

I was able to extend the c drive to 100gb so there is no need for concern.

 

[Brink]

Knightyyz,

Yeah, you made a mistake somewhere. You would need to click on the Disk 1 gray box area to the left of the 223.58 GB Unallocated area, and click on the Initialize Disk option to see if that may help Disk 1 to allow you to use it again.

For Disk 0, you may need to use a free program like Partition Wizard to shrink H and extend C into that unallocated space.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Brink]

Ok, I'm an idiot. I could have sworn that before i tried this my hard drive showed "C" as 30gb and the rest was 932 but after trying to increase the 30gb part i ended up with a total of 932. But after searching i found out that windows shows a 1tb drive as 932gb.

I was able to extend the c drive to 100gb so there is no need for concern.

I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted.

 

[Dave76]

Ok, I'm an idiot. I could have sworn that before i tried this my hard drive showed "C" as 30gb and the rest was 932 but after trying to increase the 30gb part i ended up with a total of 932. But after searching i found out that windows shows a 1tb drive as 932gb.

I was able to extend the c drive to 100gb so there is no need for concern.

Glad you got it sorted.

Let us know if you have any questions.

 

[gloteron]

Resize problem

Hi!
I have a problem with the resizing of partitions, I tried to shrink my volume since i only had one partition, and it said somewhere in the process "Permission Denied" something like that. Now I still see the one partition of 500gb but Win7 says i only have 350gb (the size I tried to shrink to).
I tried everything but all softwares think I have one 500gb partition. Any ideas?

Thank you,

 

[Brink]

Hello Gloteron, and welcome to Seven Forums.

Could you post a screenshot of your Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc) window showing all of your HDD's layout? This will give us a better understanding of your situation and what options you may have.

 

[gloteron]

Thank you for your reply,
As you can see in the photo the HD is 465GB but the partition is only 319gb. There is no unallocated space as expected after the shrink next to C partition.

Part of trying to fix I tried running other partition management softwares. I did get a warning message when I tried to run Partition Magic 8 that said there is some kind of a mistake with this partition size but it couldn't repair the problem because of "missing partition letter" and the software crashed.

Every other windows check or defrag runs fine, as if the missing 150gb are not a problem at all.

Thx again

 

[Brink]

Gloteron,

You most likely could fix this by running the clean command in a command prompt at boot like in the tutorial below, but this would wipe everything out on your HDD and mean a clean reinstall of Windows 7 as well. If you want to do this, then after you run the clean command, it will leave the HDD as unallocated space. From here, you would boot from your Windows 7 installation disc to select and install Windows 7 to the unallocated space. Windows 7 would then format the HDD and start installing.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html

Be sure that you backup anything that you do not want to lose to a separate location first.