One of the common complaints I get from friends and family is that their computers with default system configurations from Dell, HP, etc. often make the C partition too small and therefore force them to look for ways to expand the partition to get more free space.
Unfortunately, when you are looking for merging partitions, the vast majority of solutions suggest that you download third-party change management software for Windows partitions. With all the choices and options available, this quickly becomes a daunting task for the average PC user. There are good programs out there and they will get the job done safely without requiring much technical knowledge, but they usually cost between $ 30 and $ 60.
In this article, I will try to show you a simpler and easier way to merge two partitions without any third party software. It is not as reliable as a third party program and in some situations you will have to use a separate program, but it will do the job for most people.
Basically, we are backing up the second partition, then deleting it, and then expanding the first partition to include the free space created when the second partition was deleted. This is how we do it on Windows 7/8/10.
Merge Partitions on Windows 7/8/10
Merging partitions in Windows 7/8/10
First, right-click “Computer” or “This PC” on the desktop and select “Manage”.
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Then click on Disk Management in the left navigation pane:
Now, in the right pane, you will see a list of volumes at the top and a list of disks at the bottom.
As you can see in the example above, I have volume C and E. Volume C is my system partition, which includes the operating system and the swap file. Volume E is just the second primary partition, about 10 GB in size. Here we want to merge the two partitions so that partition C is 60GB instead of 50GB.
The first thing we need to do is right-click the E section at the bottom and select “Delete Volume”.
You will receive a warning that deleting a volume will erase all data on it. Make sure you back up anything to this volume before doing this. After you delete it, you will see that it becomes Unallocated Space.
Now, to merge partitions, just right-click on the partition you want to expand (C in my case) and choose Expand Volume.
The wizard will open, so click Next. On the Select Disk screen, it should automatically select the disk and display its capacity from any unallocated space.
As you can see, the wizard has found 9999 MB of unallocated space that I can use to expand volume C. Click Next and then Finish. You will now see that the first partition (volume C) has been expanded to include all disk space.
This is it! Yes, with this method you need to delete the partition and back up your data, but at least you don’t have to worry about third-party software and pay for anything. It is not difficult to just copy some data to an external hard drive and then copy it later. If you have any questions, please leave a comment! Enjoy!
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