I can't extend my drive on Disk Management

ItachiUchiha

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Apr 21, 2014
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So I have 1 hard drive (Size: 1 TB), and I divided my hard drive into 3 partitions :
C: have 285gb (approximate)
D: have 351gb (approximate)
E: have 283gb (approximate)

So in my drive C, there's my Windows OS, on my D, is my Games, and lastly E, for the installed programs.

I decided to extend the E, because it I moved my documents, music, pictures, etc. from C to E, so 283gb is not enough for all of that. And I also want my C to be a drive of OS only, so a 285gb of only OS is too much, I want to shrink C to 50-100gb, and add the Unallocated part to E.

So now I shrink my C, and now I see the Unallocated part, but my problem is when I right-click the the DRIVE E:, I can't extend the volume, it's gray, and not clickable.

So, can somebody here can help me?
 

ItachiUchiha

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Apr 21, 2014
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Uhhm, sorry sir, I don't get you.
I'm new with this stuff, so can you explain a better way like you're talking to a dummy?
 

Paperdoc

Polypheme
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What you want to do is difficult unless you use a sophisticated disk reorganization utility. It is also VERY risky for your data because if ANYTHING goes wrong in the middle of the work, you could lose it all. Hence, the smart thing to do FIRST is back up ALL your data. That means EVERYTHING on ALL three Partitions.

Before outlining the steps to be done, let's do background. You have three Partitions on one HDD. They total 919 GB. Now, a "1 TB HDD" will hold about 1,000 x 10^9 bytes, but Windows re-defines "GB" to be 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes, or 1,073,741,824 bytes. So it will tell you that the capacity of your 1TB unit is 931 GB. Thus, it would appear that your HDD really is completely full with those three Partitions.

Next, how Partitions are handled. Each Partition is one CONTIGUOUS chunk of space on the HDD. That means each MUST be in one solid block, not in pieces spread over the HDD unit. In order to Expand a Partition, you can ONLY add to it a chunk of Unallocated Space that is RIGHT after it on the HDD. What you hoped to do was to shrink your C: drive (the first Partition, I expect) and create a chunk of Unallocated Space that sits between your C: and D: Partitions. But you cannot Expand E: to include that. You have to find a way to get that space AFTER E:. That's what rgd1101 was suggesting - moving D: forward right up to the end of C:, then moving E: forward right up to the end of D:, and THEN Expanding E:. BUT there is no easy way to do that without a good reorganization utility like Partition Magic. Windows certainly can't do it.

Now, thinking about all that data copying, you can see that ANY glitch could lose a LOT of stuff - maybe even all of it! That is why anyone doing this should ALWAYS back up EVERYTHING before starting. BUT, once you have done the full backups and are SURE they are good so you can restore all your data from them, you CAN do the job using just Windows tools. How? Follow this sequence.

1. Back up each "drive" (Partition) fully to a separate storage unit. Verify that you can read those backups. Now set them aside in a safe place.
2. Use Disk Management to Delete both the D: and E: "drives" (Partitions) on your HDD unit. This leaves only the first Partition, (the C: drive, I hope) at the very start of the HDD unit.
3. IF you feel any further need to change the size of C:, do so now. Maybe this means you must delete a bunch of files from it and Defragment it so that it has all its empty space at its end. Then you can Shrink it. This is another reason why you NEED the backup of all the data from the old C: drive.
4. Create a new Partition for D: of the size you want and Format that.
5. Create a new Partition for E: using ALL the remaining space, and Format that. NOW you have three "drives" with E: larger than before.
6. Restore each of the D: and E: drives' data to the new Partitions. Now you have spare space on the E: drive. If you need to copy to there some files from the backup of the original C: drive, this is when to do that.

This all will take a long time with all the copying to be done. It also requires that you have a spare HDD unit or something on which to place three sets of data backups.