Merge an unallocated space into D drive

Hello, I am trying to merge an unallocated space of 37 GB into my D drive but failed. Can anyone direct me to finish this? Thanks a lot.

I only have one hard drive of 500 GB (see the attached scree shot). If I try "Merge Partition Wizard", I can only select C drive. If I try "redistribute free space wizard", I can't see that unallocated space.

 

Just click on the "Move/Resize Partition" icon and and adjust the "Space Before Partition" slider selector to zero increasing the Local Disk D Partition size to 259.6 GB.

 

Thank you for the reply. However, "Free space before" is zero already, see the attached scree shot. I still can't use the 37.4 GB free space for D drive.

Any idea? Thanks a lot.

 

You are attempting to resize only the D: partition within an extended partition. Try to resize the Extended partition instead.

The yellow highlighted portion should be around the light blue extended partition, not inside of it around only the D: partition inside of the extended partition.

 

Thanks for the information, though I don't quite understand it.

So in plain language, what menu item or button should I click to merge the unallocated 37.4 GB into my D drive? Thanks.

 

You can also click on "Partition List" and then click on "Extended Partition", right click and choose "Move/Resize Partition"

It's like you have a grocery bag inside of a cooler, which is in the trunk of your car. The grocery bag takes up the entire volume of the cooler, so even though you have more room inside your trunk for a bigger cooler, you can't make your grocery bag bigger because it's inside the cooler.

You are trying to make the grocery bag bigger... You need to make the cooler bigger before you can make the grocery bag bigger.

Let me know if that helps!

 

You are right, it is difficult to resize a partition to the left, I would make a backup of drive D, delete the existing volume D making one extended unallocated space of 259.6 GB, then format the unallocated space as Drive D and restore the Drive D backup into it.

 

That´s a better solution.

 

It's not difficult in the least. The customer made an extended partition, within that partition he created a logical partition. Its as simple as resizing the extended partition, and then resizing or creating another logical partition within the extended partition.

If the customer had made D: a primary partition instead of a logical partition nested within an extended partition then it would have just been a matter of resizing that partition.

Making a backup and deleting and then restoring is a far more complicated process with far more steps with a much higher risk factor, also requiring much more free disk space and time. That method is not recommended at all.

Simple:

Step1. Resize Extended partition
Step2. Resize Logical partition

 

I don´t agree. I think the backup/restore method is safer, you always have one "copy" of the data. And can be faster too, although this depends on the volume of the data involved in the operation. I have read many horror stories about lost data when doing long move operations of large volumes of data.

 

Try This, goto the Partition List tab, find the Extended Partition and select it, do the Move/Resize Partition on the Extended Partition, the select the Drive D logical Drive and Do the Move/Resize Partition on the logical Drive D.

Good Luck.

 

As Paragon Chris said,

OP needs to move/resize the Extended partition to the left to incorporate the unallocated space. Very easy.

The Extended partition contains the logical drive D.

The trick is to select the edge of the Extended partition - not the logical drive.

Here is the logical drive selected - it is outlined in gold :



Here the EXTENDED partition is selected - it is outlined in gold :



If it only contains one logical drive - it isn't very easy to see.

 

It is not faster, can not physically be faster and is not safer. In both methods you are relying on one point of failure to not happen, but in the method you believe is better there are many more additional steps to complicate the matter and introduce problems. That method is a terrible method and far over complicated for the operation the OP would like to perform, I would HIGHLY discourage op from trying it and from an official paragon stance would say that it absolutely the incorrect way to achieve the results OP wants.

cincinnatijack has revised what he thinks is the best way and suggested the same operation I explained, SIW2 has also suggested OP perform the operation I outlined.

Edit:
It is however always recommended to perform regular backups of your data, and to have a current backup before you perform any HDD operations. But this should be a separate, no related operation and should be located somewhere other than the drive that is being backed up.

 

Thanks for the help.

I was able to resize the extended partition. Then I tried to do Wizards-->
Advanced --> Redistribute Free Space . I selected D drive and the info on dialog seems right. Then I click Apply button. The "Check file system" seems never be done. I have run it for about half an hour. See the attached pictures.

Any idea? Or I should keep waiting? Anyway I will try it again this weekend.

 

Why do you want to Redistribute Free Space on Drive D, you have only one hard drive with two partitions, Drive C and Drive D; Drive C is active drive, so to resize it the program will have to reboot the computer and unmount drive C.

Just go ahead and use Drive D as is, if you need more space just resize it again manually.

 

It seems I was able to merge the free space to my D drive.

Thanks for the help.

 

Glad it worked for you.

Thanks for the update.