Changing hard drive partitions

milkloss

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
Any experts out there? Have ran out of system space on the C: partition which obviously wasn't big enough from when the machine was new, loads of Space on the D: partition. Do I use third party software to extend the system partition or clone to an external drive and then do it?

Windows 10

Any software recommendations?

Many thanks.
 
I take it the C: and D: partitions are on the same physical drive?

You can only extend a partition if it has unallocated space after it.
Your best bet may be to remove any data on D: to an external drive, once all data is removed, remove that partition so it becomes unallocated space, then extend C: into it.
D: can then be created on the remaining space and data put back.

Or, fit another physical drive, make that D: and put all data on it, then as above, the old D: can be removed and used to extend C:

I always keep data on separate drives to the windows drive/partition. If windows needs a reinstall all my data is then safe.

Have you tried running something like CCleaner to see if it cleans up old temp files and the like?
 

milkloss

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
I take it the C: and D: partitions are on the same physical drive?

You can only extend a partition if it has unallocated space after it.
Your best bet may be to remove any data on D: to an external drive, once all data is removed, remove that partition so it becomes unallocated space, then extend C: into it.
D: can then be created on the remaining space and data put back.

Or, fit another physical drive, make that D: and put all data on it, then as above, the old D: can be removed and used to extend C:

I always keep data on separate drives to the windows drive/partition. If windows needs a reinstall all my data is then safe.

Have you tried running something like CCleaner to see if it cleans up old temp files and the like?

Thanks, yes, one physical drive. You just confirmed how I initially planned on doing it but google made it seem so complicated and needing this and that software. I'll still copy the whole drive anyhow to an external disk I have. Doesn't seem to be any files to clean up after I had a good crack at it so I'll charge on.

What size do you think the windows drive should be out of curiosity? Can't remember out of the topic my head but seemed pretty bloated to me
 
Thanks, yes, one physical drive. You just confirmed how I initially planned on doing it but google made it seem so complicated and needing this and that software. I'll still copy the whole drive anyhow to an external disk I have. Doesn't seem to be any files to clean up after I had a good crack at it so I'll charge on.

What size do you think the windows drive should be out of curiosity? Can't remember out of the topic my head but seemed pretty bloated to me

Windows 10 partition size really depends on how you use the machine. If you will be installing a lot of software, the bigger the better. Another advantage of having data on a different partition is the one with windows on it doesn't fill up so fast.
I like to have at least 500GB for the Windows partition, I currently have Windows on a 500GB ssd. If I had to go smaller, then I wouldn't go less than 200GB for Windows. This is based on having all my data separate from Windows. Again, it depends on how you use the machine, 100GB may be enough.
What size is the whole drive currently installed?
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
use something like Norton ghost to take an image of C onto a external drive (do it twice at least to make sure !)

then reformat your hard drive and restore to it ?


safter would be to its stall an additional drive thats bigger ?
 
You can do it in win 10 pro, Backup first.

Then click start then type "partition" click create hard drive partitions.
you need to shrink the D and expand the C. right click on the drive should show up the shrink command etc. issues can be with data placement on the drive not allowing this to happen. then you may need other software.

help with it here.
https://www.howtogeek.com/101862/ho...ndows-without-downloading-any-other-software/
 

milkloss

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
It's a 1.9 TB drive so shouldn't be short of space! Initially it started with 150GB for windoze And the rest is for D: as well as a couple of recovery partitions. Seeing as the computer was shipped with win8 I'm sure one of those is irrelevant now but they are not enough to worry about.

I'm needing a new external drive to backup the itunes library from D: as well as a load of pictures. The intention is to Back it all up and change the partitions round. The problem is actually Itunes forcing Iphone backups into the c: drive taking up far too much space.

@Agri Design , It's not that simple because the unallocated space has to be immediately to the right of the drive you are trying to expand which means D: is in the way. If I were to shrink D: then the unallocated space created would be to the right of D: and not in between C: and D: ifyswim. I could use third party software to do the dirty on it but I think I'm best to backup anyhow and do it myself.
 
It's a 1.9 TB drive so shouldn't be short of space! Initially it started with 150GB for windoze And the rest is for D: as well as a couple of recovery partitions. Seeing as the computer was shipped with win8 I'm sure one of those is irrelevant now but they are not enough to worry about.

I'm needing a new external drive to backup the itunes library from D: as well as a load of pictures. The intention is to Back it all up and change the partitions round. The problem is actually Itunes forcing Iphone backups into the c: drive taking up far too much space.

@Agri Design , It's not that simple because the unallocated space has to be immediately to the right of the drive you are trying to expand which means D: is in the way. If I were to shrink D: then the unallocated space created would be to the right of D: and not in between C: and D: ifyswim. I could use third party software to do the dirty on it but I think I'm best to backup anyhow and do it myself.

1.9TB is a nice size.
Your plan sounds like a good choice. Backup all data, especially from D:, delete the D: partition, expand C: into the extra space, I would go for a 500GB partition for Windows, should be more than enough. Once all that's done, create D: on whats left and stick your data back on.
Before you do any of this, it may be an idea to take an image of the current Windows partition, just in case. I use DriveImage XML for this kind of thing, it's very good, can even make a 'hot' image ie: create an image from within Windows with Windows running.
 

milkloss

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
East Sussex
1.9TB is a nice size.
Your plan sounds like a good choice. Backup all data, especially from D:, delete the D: partition, expand C: into the extra space, I would go for a 500GB partition for Windows, should be more than enough. Once all that's done, create D: on whats left and stick your data back on.
Before you do any of this, it may be an idea to take an image of the current Windows partition, just in case. I use DriveImage XML for this kind of thing, it's very good, can even make a 'hot' image ie: create an image from within Windows with Windows running.

That's the plan. I've already made an image of c: using the win10 drive image function which Microsoft thought would be a good idea to hide for some reason :scratchhead:
 
Partitioning a hard drive into smaller logical drives is very common.
What sort of problems have you experienced? Just interested, I've always partitioned large drives and never had any problems to date.
Many of the PC's that are partitioned seem to not be set up right so that all the data is on the C drive as well as the OS etc, thus leaving the D partition empty!
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
maybe a suggestion would be to get a NAS drive and clear some space moving media etc to it ? I only have 0.5tb SSD in my laptop and desktop and with cloud / NAS storage options I have loads of room, NAS at hime has close to 2000 HD movies on it and musics, itunes etc - its RAID mirrored so if a drive fails I don't loose stuff
 
Many of the PC's that are partitioned seem to not be set up right so that all the data is on the C drive as well as the OS etc, thus leaving the D partition empty!

Yes, I have seen this on machines bought off the shelf, I've also worked on machines from reputable pc builders who have built the machine as per the customers requirements and not set Windows to use the extra partition(s) for data.
 
Location
North
A drive backup is always a good idea but free programs like EaseUS partition manager can resize partitions on one go. Sometimes even live while you are working with the computer.

Obviously only the free space of one partition can be allocated to another partition. If necessary, resize and move data and resize again.
 

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