Disk Management - Delete and Extend

How to Delete and Extend a Partition with Disk Management in Vista​

   Information

When you Delete a hard disk partition (volume) you turn that partition into a unallocated (unformated) partition. You can then use this unallocated partition to Extend another partition to a larger size. For more information, see: Windows Help and How-to: Partition and Understanding Disk Partitioning

Partition Type	Description
Primary Partition	A type of partition created on a hard drive that can host an operating system and functions as though it were a physically separate hard drive. Also called a volume. Only up to four primary partitions, or 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition can be created on a single hard drive. Primary partitions can be used to install and start an operating system. If you want to create more than three partitions, the fourth partition is created as an extended partition. See: Windows Help and How-to: What are system partitions and boot partitions? and The Storage Team at Microsoft - File Cabinet Blog : Understanding the error message "There is not enough space available on the disk(s) to complete this operation" when you create a volume
Extended Partition	A type of partition on a hard drive that should be used if you want to create more than four Primary partition. Extended partitions can contain multiple logical drives that can be formatted and have drive letters assigned to them. An extended partition is a container that can hold one or more logical drive. Logical drives function like primary partitions except that they cannot be used to start an operating system. This option has been removed in Disk Management for Vista. For how, see: The Storage Team at Microsoft - File Cabinet Blog :How to create an extended partition in Windows Vista (Click Yes for Security Information)

   Note

This can be handy, for example, if you have one hard drive with two partitions and would like to Delete the second partition and Extend the first (boot) partition with Vista back to one large partion (volume).

   Tip

The default location for Disk Management is C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc.

   Warning

• You will not lose any data on the partition (volume) that you are Extending. The partition you want to delete and use to extend another partion must be to the immediate right of the one you want to extend. You can cannot extend a partition from a deleted partition two or more partions to the right of it.
• All data on a partition will be lost when you Delete it. Be sure to back up any files that you want to save to a different location before you continue.

EXAMPLE: Before and After

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STEP ONE

To Delete a Partition

1. Open the Control Panel. (Classic View)​

A) Click on the Administrative Tools icon.​

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B) Click on Computer Management.​

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2. Click on Continue in the UAC prompt.​

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

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4. Right click on the volume (EX: E:\ ) you want to delete that is just to the right of the partition that you want to extend, and click on Delete Volume.​

NOTE: If your hard disk is currently set up as a single partition, then you cannot delete it. You also cannot delete a system partition (OS isntalled on), boot partition, or any partition that contains a virtual memory paging file, because Vista needs this information to start correctly. You will have to use the Vista installation disk to delete it.​

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5. Click on Yes to the confirmation prompt. (See screenshot below)​

NOTE: This will leave the partition as unallocated (blank) with no drive letter.​

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STEP TWO

To Extend a Partition

6. Right click on the partition (EX: C:\ ) the is just to the left of the unallocated space that you want to Extend it into, and click on Extend Volume. (See screenshot below)​

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7. Click on Next for the Welcome to the Extend Volume Wizard window. (See screenshot below)​

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8. Select the amount of space in MB you want to use from the unallocated partition to use to Extend this partition. (See screenshot below)​

NOTE: If you want to make one partition again, then select all of the available space for that one disk. If there were other drives with free unallocated space, they would be shown under the Available selection.​

WARNING: It is advised that you do not extend a volume on one disk with free space from another disk. If one of the drives has a hardware failure, then all the data on that partition (volume) will be deleted.​

A) Click on Next.​

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9. Click on Finish in the Completing Extend window. (See screenshot below)​

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10. You will now see the Disk Management console with the new Extended partition volume ready to be used. (See screenshot below)​

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11. Close Computer Management.​

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12. Click on Computer in the Start Menu and see your new Extened partition volume. (See screenshot below)​

NOTE: In this example, we will have one large partition from the same hard disk now.​

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That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

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• How to Shrink and Create a Partition with Disk Management in Vista
• How to Change a Drive Icon in Vista
• How to Add, Change, or Remove a Drive Letter in Vista
• How to Change the Default Boot Partition in Vista
• How to Show or Remove Drive Letters from Displaying in Vista
• How to Rename a Drive in Vista
• How to Disable or Enable Low Disk Space Warning in Vista
• How to Increase Hard Drive Performance in Vista
• How to Restrict or Unrestict Drive Access in Vista
• How to Hide or Unhide a Drive in Vista
• How to Create a Drive Shortcut in Vista
• How to Mount or Dismount a Drive or Partition to a Folder in Vista
• How to Convert a FAT or FAT32 Volume to NTFS in Vista
• How to Recover Deleted Partitions in Vista, Windows 7, and Windows 8

 

[melt]

true, it would be easier. will give it a try. didn't want to take a risk with my data / progs. will use DriveImage XML to back up all the drives first though.

Melt

 

[Zaniah]

I have a laptop, with 3 hard-drives, C, D and F. Following information given in another post, I deleted drive D, but when i came to integrate it into drive C the option to expand was greyed out, so I have reversed it. My recovery items are not on D but on F, can you please advise how i can make use of the D drive? I've attached a screenprint of my disk management page.

Thank you

 

[Brink]

Hello Zaniah, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Assuming that your D: drive is the 1.46 GB 1st partition, you will not be able to do this from within Disk Management since it is the left of the C: partition instead of to the right of it.

You would need to use a 3rd party program like the free Partition Wizard Home Edition to do this with instead. Delete the 1.46 GB partition twice until it unallocated space, then use the program to extend C into the unallocated space.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[ronrontiu]

Is it ok to convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk? This is an external hard drive by the way. Would I be able to use the drive on other computers? The disk management is forcing me to convert if I want to extend the main partition.

 

[Brink]

Hello Ron,

I would advise to leave it as a basic disk for the best compatibility. Plus, if you convert it to a dynamic disk, you will not be able to boot Vista from it.

Could you post a screenshot of your Disk Management showing your drive layout? We may be able to find a way for you to extend it.

Hope this helps for now,
Shawn

 

[ronrontiu]

Disk 1 has 2 partitions. I put the Extra for the leftover space but I want to put the space to OS:. I won't be installing any OS on this.

 

[Brink]

To do this, you will have to use a 3rd party program like the free Partition Manager. You will not be able to using Disk Management since the F: partition is to the left of the partition you want to add it to.

Using the program, you will need to delete the F partition for it to become "unallocated space", then extend the C: partition into the "unallocated space".

 

[Fresco]

WOW!!! this thread is like a gold mine... thank you, Brink!

As I understand it, more than two partitions is not necessary... and I agree.

I've only used one partition (because I didn't know how to do it any other way) and I will probably have to do a clean install of my machine. If not now, then in the near future... no machine lives forever. My intention is to create two partitions:

Drive C: for Windows and all programs
Drive D: for all Data (making data backups a breeze)

I am using Vista x64

Question:
WHEN should I partition my drive?
I wipe my hard drive to "out of the box factory settings"
Get all my Windows Updates (Service pack one, then two)

got my Norton, got my Photoshop, etc...

If I'm not mistaken, Partitioning after the fact is possible, in Vista. I just wanna do it correctly, right out of the gate... and not risk losing data I just installed when formatting the new partition. When would you recommend?


*also... Photoshop.8 on install says that I should have scratch disk on a separate volume, and not the one its loaded on. Please confirm my assumption that the program should be installed in Drive C: and allocate the scratch disk to Drive D:

***OR do I have to create a whole new drive partition just for Photoshop scratch disk?

thanks in advance.

 

[Brink]

Hello Fresco,

It depends on if you are installing Vista with a retail installation disc or a OEM factory recovery disc.

If retail, then you can create the partition before or after installing Vista on the C: partition. However, it would be best to create the D: partition first if you wanted to keep data backed up on the D: partition before installing Vista on the C: partition.

If OEM, then it will have to be after since it will most likely wipe everything on the HDD anyways. It may still recreate everything (ex: partitions) that is on the HDD as it was out of the box though.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[Fresco]

Thanks for the the feedback and link to the tutorial, Brink... much appreciated!!

If/when I do a clean install... I will be using the System Recovery Disks I made when I first bought the computer.

In my research, I gather that when system recovery kicks in, one of the pages will allow me the option to partition my drive. (It came as one large C: drive out of the box.)

Since C: is all one big partition, my assumption was that there was no portion of my drive that was free... so I had to shrink it first before I could make a new partition.

In Disk Manager from what wasn't grayed out, "Shrink Volume" was the only thing that seemed to make sense. The calculation came up with how much the drive could be shrunk to, and it came up to about 10GB... so I let it make me a D: drive for that.

Now I have two partitions for the very first time in my life (woo-hoo!)

Thing is, I can really see myself filling up that 10GB with data over time... I couldn't imagine my system was using up ALL 590GB of my hard drive for Windows and a couple of programs. But didn't wanna mess anything up, so I stayed with the 10 GB

Properties says I have about 450GB of free space on my C: Drive now. (why did it calculate to shrink by only 10GB?) Do I really need all that free space for "System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Partition" on my C: drive?

Thanks again for the fast reply!!

 

[Brink]

You're welcome.

Was only 10GB (10x1024=10240MB) the maximum available space to shrink it by?

 

[Fresco]

Just going from memory, yes... I could be wrong though... (I didn't change any of the numbers that came up in the fields when it did its calculations.)

I just did another "Query of Shrinkspace" on my new C: drive,
and it came up with Zero in all the fields

although... my "query" window does not look like your screeshot...
I right click on the C: Drive (the box with the blue stripe on top)

and a menu opens up with options that include "Shrink Volume"
I click that, and it gives me the Number Zero in all the fields

------------------------------------------------------------
when I click on D: drive
"extend" is grayed out; I can only "Shrink" or "Delete"

when I click on C: drive
Everything is grayed out, except for "Shrink"
(but when I try to shrink, Query says I can shrink it by zero megabites... or the equivalent of shrink being grayed out in the previous screen)

 

[Brink]

Fresco,

Could you post a screenshot of your Disk Management showing all of your drive(s) layout? I'll be happy to see if I may be able to spot why this is happening.

 

[Fresco]

I would love to post a screen-shot if I could, Brink... but I can't at this time... the reason why I am at this site in the first place (my Photoshop is not launching anymore) ...Tom is being very helpful in helping me with that issue in the Forum on this website, under Software.
http://www.vistax64.com/software/290133-freeze-out-so-called-improvements-updates.html

I just came across another thread you created
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/95398-disk-management-shrink-partition.html

assuming there is a fragment or some bit of something or another on my drive, that prevents me from making a much bigger D: drive... since I don't have a third party utility... its seems I do a clean install, or just make my peace with only 10GB out of 600GB for my data files.

*can you guess at what could possibly be preventing my Photoshop from launching properly?

thanks again, Brink!!

 

[Brink]

I'm afraid that I have no idea why.

Are you able to use Paint to create the screenshot (click on link) instead?

 

[Fresco]

hope this works...

I tried defragmenting my hard drive, hoping to get rid of whatever clutter or remnant might be on the drive, preventing the shrinkage to go towards the left more... heh heh shrinkage.

all kidding aside

assumed that Defrag would've done the trick, but all that it did was allow me to go from zeroes all across the board, to a 383 MB... better than nothing... but relatively speaking, its not even a drop in the bucket.

I allowed it to shrink, because I wanted to show you a screen grab of the error message I was getting a few times today... said something like I did not have the access or authority or something... but to my surprise, it actually shrank my C: drive

So now I have a bit more empty space I can allocate to my D: drive... assuming I have to "Delete Volume D:" then once all that stuff becomes Unallocated, I can create a new D: drive for the entire amount.


I hate having to do that yet, because I would love to dig deeper in the C drive ...as I have 528 GB of free space. How can I do that? Defrag was no help... and wiping the drive clean and starting from scratch didn't do the trick either... any help would be deeply appreciated!!

thanks in advance

 

[Brink]

Fresco,

Since the "Unallocated space" is to the left of the D: partition instead of to the right, you would need to use a 3rd party program like the free Partition Wizard Home Edition to "extend" the D: partition into the "Unallocated space" to have it all in the D: partition afterwards.

 

[Fresco]

Hello Brink, thank you for the quick reply...

I will do as you suggest, and utilize the third party Utility/Software.

curious... in my downtime, I utilized a third party Defrag utility, which was nice. I don't see why Windows Vista can't let us "see" the various clusters in their defrag tool. Its also nice to know if its almost done by alerting us with a progress bar or % until done. Hated doing it "blind"

anyways, after the all new all improved defrag, Windows Vista Disk Management allows shrinkage of 3009MG more... awesome!! Would be nice if it was bigger, but its way more than before. Trouble is, I get the ACCESS DENIED window

which is weird, since I did nothing differently on sign on... so its still me, but it won't recognized me as Administrator... unless its recognizing some clusters have data in them, that was invisible to the Queiring tool.

Puzzler....

QUESTION: before I utilize the third party Partition Wizard software,

*Should I "Delete" Volume D:
make Volume C: the entire partition as it was before I started tinkering with it (with no unallocated space)?

*Or just go at it from here with Partition Wizard?

(what exact steps should you take if this was your machine?)

 

[Brink]

If you just wanted to delete D: , then you could do so in Disk Management. Next, you could shrink C: more to add more to the unallocated space. Afterwards you could create a new simple volume ( D: ) with the unallocated space in Disk Management as well. Be sure to backup anything that you do not want to lose on D: first though.

If you use Partition Wizard, then there's no need to delete D: .

 

[Fresco]

You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar... thank you many times over for all of your valuable assistance.

The suggestions and recommendations you've made have all been right on target. Thank you for helping me navigate through the onslaught of information overload, as I was giving myself a crash course on the subject. I am finally in a position of being productive again, thanks to you and your wealth of high quality information.

If I may intrude on your time once more... is there a utility that you favor, to copy files from a removable HDD to my new drive. I am guessing just copying the files using my desktop is sufficient enough... but if someone re-invented the wheel in that regard, I am all eyes and ears.

Again... thank you so very much, Brink!
it has all been deeply appreciated!!!

best always,

-Fresco!