Adding space from D:drive to C:drive in Windows 7

[brightlight864]

I have an Acer Aspire 5610Z laptop which I just upgraded from Vista to Windows 7.  I use an external hard 500G hard drive to handle back ups and want to combine C:drive and D:drives (partitions of one hard drive).  I'm reasonably proficient with a computer.  I know enough to know that I can get myself in real trouble fast.

I've made a System Image disk (as soon as I upgraded) and do a full back up weekly so I'm not too worried about losing files, etc., but I'm not comfortable using Disk Management.

The way I read the instructions indicates I need to get rid of D:drive and then right click on on C:drive in Disk Management in order to put the "unallocated space" that was D:drive into C:drive.  I got so far as removing D:drive and chickened out before I started messing around with C:drive.

Am I heading in the right direction.  Also, other than making a couple of copies of the System Image disk and doing regular back ups, what should I do to protect my files, etc. 

Thanks a lot!

Brightlight864

[Quantos]

Hello and welcome to Computer Hope.

This all depends on what the second partition is.  Many laptops have a small partition that holds files for restoring the system.  You may not want to play around with that.

Why don't you tell us what details Disk Management supplies for your D:\ drive.

[soybean]

I got so far as removing D:drive ...

Looks like he's alreay deleted the D partition.

[Quantos]

Looks like he's alreay deleted the D partition.

Good catch Soybean, I'd missed that.

[brightlight864]

Thanks guys.

I checked Disk Management and found the following information:

Disk 0 is a basic disk with 111.79 GB online.

Acer C: is showing as simple Healthy partition with 52.14 GB NTFS

There is a 7.81 GB simple section showing as a Healthy Recovery Partition

The rest of the drive (51.84 GB) is showing as unallocated.

Hope this is what you were looking for.

Thanks

Brightlight864

[soybean]

There is a 7.81 GB simple section showing as a Healthy Recovery Partition

The Recovery Partition is usually appears in Windows as drive D, but you said you deleted D.  So, what drive letter is assigned to that Recovery Partition?

[brightlight864]

Thanks for the answer back ,Soybean.

Just checked Disk Management.  This is my description of what I found since I wasn't able to attach the log to this message.

In the volume list view, there are headings as below.  I used ? to indicate the partition you were asking about and ----- to indicate a blank space.

                                     ? Disk                                        ACER(C:)
Volume                      ---------------                            ACER(C:)
Layout                      Simple                                     Simple
Type                          Basic                                       Basic
File System                --------------                              NTSF
Status                       Healthy (Recovery Partition    Healthy (System, Boot, Page File,
                                                                                Active, Crash Dump, Primary Parti.)
Capacity                    7.81 GB                                  52.14 GB
Free space                7.81 GB                                   17.90 GB
% Free                       100%                                     34%
Fault Tolerance           No                                         No
Overhead                   0%                                         0%

The unallocated section is not mentioned at all.

In the Graphical View. the first section is captioned Disk 0. I took this to mean the whole hard drive.  It is not actually part of the graph but seems to be some sort of heading.  The box it's in is totally gray.   It shows as a Basic disk, with 111.70 GB of space and it shows as "online".

The second section has a blue heading (color code for primary disk).  There is no drive designation, just an empty space.  The space shows as 7.81 GB; and the disk shows up as Healthy (Recovery Partition).  The background is white hashed with diagonal gray lines.

The third section has a blue heading.  The drive designation is ACER (C:).  The space shows up as 52.14 GB NTFS and the disk shows up as Healthy (see above wording for Drive (C:).  The background is plain white.

The fourth section has a black heading (color code for unallocated space).  This is where drive (D:) should be. There is no drive designation and the space shows up as 51.84 GB and asUnallocated.  The background is plain white.

The three GB amounts total to  111.79 GB, equal to Disk 0 in the first box (heading).

In the Disk List, the captions are as follows:

Disk                            Disk 0
Type                           Basic
Capacity                     111.79 GB
Unallocated Space      51.84 GB
Status                         Online
Device Type                 IDE
Partition Style              MBR

I hope this will help you help me.

Again, many thanks.

brightlight864

[brightlight864]

This is the solution to the problem I had in November.  I finally got through to Microsoft and their customer service engineer sent me the following instructions:

a.  Click START, right-click COMPUTER, and then click MANAGE.

b.  Under STORAGE,  click DISK MANAGEMENT.

c.   Right-click the unallocated drive.  Click NEW SIMPLE VOLUME. 

d.  Assign a drive letter and select the amount of space you would like to use for the partition.  Click on NEXT
     and follow the on screen instructions.

Since I wanted more space for C: drive, I used the directions to increase C: drive.  When I right-clicked on C: drive, I was given several options, including "Expand Volume".  I clicked that and took over the unallocated space.  I have an external hard drive (F:), which I'm using for backups, etc. and another that has named itself D: drive.

Hope this helps someone with the same problem.  Don't know if it will work with earlier versions of Windows but it worked with Windows 7.

Thanks Soybean and Quantus.

[soybean]

Thanks for the follow-up, brightlight864.  That technique would work with Vista, too, but not XP or earlier versions of Windows.  The feature was introduced with Vista.