# Partitioning in W7, Allocate Unallocated Space



## webmanoffesto (Jun 4, 2010)

I wasn't sure if I should post this to the W7 forum or to post to a Hard Disks forum. I'm enjoying W7, so I hope W7 offers a good solution.

While repartitioning my computer I ended up with a corrupted MBR and 40GB of unallocated space. So I reformatted C: and installed W7. But now I want to allocate the unallocated space.

The present situation:
Disk 0, Basic
C: System 62.5 GB
D: Data 195.54GB
8 MB Unallocated
40.03 GB Free Space

How to I take the "40.03 GB Free Space" and add 10GB to C: and add 30GB to D: ?

Tom


----------



## skinnywhiteboy (Jan 26, 2001)

Use the disk management utility in Windows 7. It will allocate the space for you. Simply right click on the C:\ partition (or whatever partition you want to distribute the space to) and then select expand.


----------



## DVOM (Jun 21, 2002)

How are the partitions arranged now? Is it C then D then the unallocated space? or is the unallocated space between the C and D partition?

And, is there a lot of data in your D partition?


----------



## webmanoffesto (Jun 4, 2010)

I went to the Disk Management. But when I right click on disk D: it only gives me the option to Shrink. I want to Expand. When I go to My Computer it says 11GB of 195 GB free. That's strange. What could the problem be?


----------



## TraderLars (Jul 25, 2010)

Here are a couple requirements to extend partitions.

The following are the requirements for the extend command: 
&#8226; The volume must be formatted with the NTFS file system. 
&#8226; For Basic volumes, the unallocated space for the extension must be the 
next contiguous space on the same disk. 
&#8226; For Dynamic Volumes, the unallocated space can be any empty space on 
any Dynamic disk on the system." 

As DVOM suggested with his question, if the unallocated space is not the next contiguous space on the disk then you will not be able to extend a basic volume.

If this is the case then it leaves two options that I can think of.

1. Keep everything as a basic disk. Create 2 new partitions from the unallocated space, format them with NTFS, one of the new partitions will be 10 gig the other one 30 gig. Create a brand new empty folder on C: and mount the 10 gig partition in that folder, do the same for d: but use the 30 gig partition.

2. Convert everything to dynamic disk. This will allow you to use any unallocated space anywhere.

Thanks.


----------



## webmanoffesto (Jun 4, 2010)

That seems like a good and creative solution. I thought Dynamic Disk was just for Raid arrays. I guess it's useful for other things too.


----------



## DVOM (Jun 21, 2002)

What you've got here is:

1) A 62.5G primary C partition.

2) An 8MB unallocated space

3) An extended partition containing: (extended is indicated by the green border around the following)
...A 66MB logical partition
...A 39.9G free space
...A 195.5G D partition
...Some free space I can't see completely

To be able to deal with this, you're going to have to use some 3rd party partition manager. Windows disk management isn't designed to deal with what you've got. The most basic obvious problem with Windows partition management here is that it can't expand a partition to the left, it can only expand to the right.

So, after you've decided on a 3rd party partition manager, you need to:

1) Delete the 66MB logical partition

2) Shrink the extended partition (within the green border) down so that it only contains your 195.5G D partition and 30G of the free space to the left of your D partition.

...That will leave you with an unallocated space made up of the original 8MB plus the 66MB free space plus 10G of the free space.
...It will also leave you with 30G of space within the extended partition to expand your D logical partition to the left.

At that point you'll be able to expand your C partition to the right and your D partition to the left. Keep in mind that the expansion of C will be fairly fast as it doesn't have to move files, and expanding your D to the left will take quite a bit of time as it needs to move all the files on D. 

Given your current understanding of how partitions work, I would recommend against considering using dynamic disks.


----------



## webmanoffesto (Jun 4, 2010)

That seems like a great way to do it. Thank you. I'll post the results.


----------

