Extend size of C:

[Rhisiart]

I have a Sony Vaio (PCV RZ24G) running XP Pro. My C: drive is full (26MB free). There was a D: partition that I never used, so I deleted it (the partition). (It is/was for some special features of the Vaio that have nothing to do with the way I use the computer.) Disk Manager shows (in the bottom part of the screen): DISK 0 as a BASIC disk with a capacity of 111.97GB; the C: is 13.97GB [capacity], NTFS, Healthy (System), 97.82GB Unallocated [this used to be the D:].

How do I get the 97.82GB of una into the C:? It doesn't have any designation and isn't formatted.

[Rhisiart]

Sorry. In the penultimate sentence it should be "unallocated" not "una".

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Hello Rhisiart

 

Welcome to Extreme Tech Support - Free PC Help

 

Do you have any Sony installation or recovery disks to hand as I'm wondering if D: was a recovery partition although it does seem rather large to have been one.

 

Without completely reformatting and setting the whole disk size as one partition you could use software like Acronis Disk Director which will merge the partitions on reboot.

 

But you would have to format D: before doing so.

[Dalo Harkin]

We have seen this before on laptops - the 2 partitions are normally the C drive with the OS and programs on and the D is a partition for storing larger files -

On most laptops now its more common to have a recovery partition than a set of disks to recover from.

[SweatyOmnivore]

The Recovery Partition should be hidden usually and what you have deleted is a seprerate partition for storing larger files. you can use disk management to re-allocate this space on to your C: drive.

 

Right-Click my computer and click Manage

 

You will see a new window and on the left pane chose disk management.

 

you should now be able to see all the partitions that your computer has detected.

 

you should then be able to extend your C: drive by using the un-allocated space.

[Dalo Harkin]

If the partition is not hidden then that would cause it to be lost!

[AdvancedSetup]

Excellent utility to extend your partitions. Since you've already removed your D: volume partition then you can use this free utility to expand the C: volume with the space from the old D: volume.

Works great, I've used it on 2000/XP/Server2003 and have not had a problem with it.

 

Gnome Partition Editor

 

 

 

 

.

[Dalo Harkin]

Again with programs like these you must use EXTREME caution and make sure that you understand what to do with them before you try it as it can have serious repercussions.

[AdvancedSetup]

Absolutely agree with you on that Dalo. I should have added a note about that.

 

CAUTION:

You MUST make sure you have a backup of ALL FILES that you you're not willing to loose. If something goes wrong with the conversion then you could lose the entire installation of Windows and have to completely reinstall it from scratch.

 

There are tools and methods to potentially get your data back, but they may not work, or you may need more advanced tools that are not free to get your data back.

 

I've used the tool many times and never had an issue yet, but you might not be so lucky, so do yourself a favor and make sure you have a solid backup of all your data.