Managing the size of your partitions is always challenging. Using third party partition software has been standard for several years now. But with Windows 7 you can make some modifications to the partition without using an external third party source.
In a previous post we showed how to shrink a volume. Here we do the opposite, how to extend a volume.
We Begin with Start -> Control Panel
Click Start and then Select Control Panel
Next select System and Security
System And Security
The next step in the process is to select Administrative Tools
Administrative Tools
Select Computer Management
Computer Management
Next select the drive or partition that you want to extend or resize.
Working with the Simple Drive
On the Simple drive the New Volume (J) has 200 mb available. In order to extend drive (I) to contain the additional space, one must first delete the volume.
Delete The Volume with the space that you will use
Select Yes
Do You Want To Delete
The Volume gets deleted and the volume has an unallocated amount of disk space. You are now ready to extend the volume.
The Disk1 with a primary partition and an unallocated volume
Now select the volume to extend. In this case it is the Simple Drive. Right Click and from the Options Available follow the steps.
Select the Extend Volume Option
Follow the Wizard
Extend the Volume Wizard
The window will show what available space you can use. In this case, it is the 200 mb that was taken from the deleted volume.
Disk Space available to extend: 200mb
Completing the operation follows
Finish The Extended Volume Operation
Results: The entire primary partition has additional space.
The Extended Volume - New Size
This completes the change. It is easy and it can allow you some modification to the partition.
One other note. If you have upgraded from XP or Vista to Windows 7 there will be a Windows.old folder that you can remove to recover additional hard drive space. It is recommended that you do this before you shrink or extend your volume partition.
i have 2 partitions, windows xp and windows 7. i want to take space from windows xp and put it on 7. but when i try to shrink windows xp it comes up as a logical drive and i need it to be free space. anyone know how to make it free space?
please use the windows 7 help forum – http://www.windows7news.com/forum for support
In Vista, 2008 and Windows 7, it’s possible to extend system partition by using Windows Disk management, which has inbuilt the features of extending volume and shrinking volume, and easy to use. But in Win2000/XP/2003 doesn’t support these new features.
About how to extend system volume in Vista,2008,Win7, here is an another instruction:
http://www.extend-partition.com/extend-system-boot-partition.html
In many cases, a Windows 7 partition can not be extended if havn’t a contiguous unallocated space after it. A called “Extend Partition Home Edition” software can enlarge a volume on win7.
good
Partition Wizard can support windows7 and do extend partition well, maybe you can have a try:http://www.partitionwizard.com/hot-extending-system-partition.html
this steps are really healpfull and simple
what should i do if there show a free space instead of unallocated space?
this is not right