Resolved Possible to extend this C partition?

I'm not sure. At this point I'm not optimistic. Here is a screenshot of the Win7 disk management tool.

The context menu is from right-clicking the C partition. As you can see, the "Extend" option is greyed out.

Even when I open this up in Paragon Partition Manager, it won't let me merge that 11 gigs of free space (the green bar) into my C partition.

I think that that partition on the far right is some recovery stuff that came with this laptop/hard drive.

Partition E was formatted when I first got this laptop, when I was thinking I might want to use a linux distro. I'm not using it now, but if I could get away with it, I'd like to keep that space there. If I had to, I could live with merging that with my C partition, but if I can't merge my free space into C, I'm not sure I could merge E, either.

 

Hi Paul,

Arie's suggestions are good ones, but if you REALLY want to merge the unallocated free space into your C partition, you should be able to do it with Paragon Partition Manager.

That said, you can't merge it directly into C. Instead, you'll have to do it one step at a time:

1. Merge the free space into the E partition.

2. Shrink E by the same amount, creating free space between E and D.

3. Merge the newly created free space into D.

4. Shrink D, creating free space between D and C.

5. Merge the free space into C.
​

Before doing any of this, be sure to back everything up to an external hard drive.

 

I want to do it b/c I was recently unable to defrag, b/c there was only 2 gigs left. What I got now, I got from deleting all but the last restore point, and shrinking my pagefile down to a gig. I know that the restore points will creep back, and I've already been told in another thread, to NOT shrink the pagefile, but to let Windows manage it. Having just upgraded RAM to 8 megs, it was taking up 8 gigs.

If I do go back to my larger pagefile and restore points are added, much of that 25% free space will disappear.

Hibernate file has been deleted (and is not enabled). Documents are in D partition. I can always remove the SP1 files (if I haven't already, I dont know), but that seems like a risky business. I have no reason to remove Sp1, but I'm not sure in the future.

 

So you can only extend a partition if there is free space between that partition and the next one? Interesting. Honestly I'm not using that space, so I might as well push it over to my C partition.

 

Hi Paul,

The answer to your question is "yes ".

Based on what Arie says in post #13 in this thread, it sounds as though you should be able to use the built-in Windows Disk Management tool (but it might just be easier with Paragon's Partition Manager).

 

So far partition manager isn't allowing me to increase the size of the C partition. I got rid of that extra partition, merged it into D, and then shrunk D, but unfortunately, the free space was to the right of the D partition, so I can't move it into the C partition--not with Windows native tool, or the demo version of Partition manager. I'll just keep my pagefile at 1 gig, and if I need to increase it, I'll fork over the cash for the full version of PM and see if I can't get that to move that space into the C partition.

 

Hi Paul,

If you're going to invest in a commercial program, instead of Paragon Partition Manager, you might consider Acronis Disk Director 11 Home. I've used it to handle my partitions for a long time, with no problems. List price is $50, but it's available here for half that. I've dealt with them for years, and they provide excellent support. Despite the name, no user group affiliation is required.

 

OK thanks for the link