Almost in all cases, the C drive is the main drive where the Windows operating system is installed. All the saved files, app data, and temporary files are saved here. As a result, the free space of C drive is an asset needed for the computer to run without problems. But, oftentimes the disk space allocated for C drive is not enough. The best solution to the low disk space problem is extending the space of the C drive from the unallocated space of others drives. So, how to increase c drive space in windows 10 from unallocated space? In this article, we’re going to show you how to extend C drive in Windows 10 without formatting or losing any data but just using other drives’ unallocated space.
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Table of Contents
Partitioning and Extend c drive windows 10
Partitioning is splitting one physical hard drive or SSD into several different logical drives or volumes. In this case, the operating system will treat these volumes as completely different drives and provides them with their own drive letters. The disk partition allocated for the OS is called a system partition.
These can be formatted into different file systems without affecting the other drives. To extend a target drive partition space, we simply shrink another drive and add some of its volumes to the target drive. As Windows has become more flexible in handling these operations throughout the upgrades, we can do this without losing or affecting any data, or formatting. In Windows 10 extend c drive is not that complex thing to do.
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Ways on How to Extend Volume of C Drive in Windows 10
There are 3 simple ways to do this:
- Using the built-in Disk Management tool from Windows.
- Using the “diskpart” command in command prompt.
- Using 3rd party applications.
Windows Disk Management Tool to Extend C Drive to Another Disk Windows 10
Disk Management tool is a built-in Windows application that comes in handy in creating, deleting, formatting, or resizing hard disk partitions, system partition, and manage unallocated spaces. It is a feature of the “Computer Management” application.
To launch, go to Control Panel> System and Security> Administrative Tools> Computer Management, or simply search for “Computer Management” in the Windows search bar. From it, under the “Storage” drop-down menu, select “Disk Management”.
Here you will find all the disk drives enlisted under Disk 0 or Disk 1 segment. The first thing you should see is the colored bars under the list. You should see all your drives (C: D: and others like e drive) under the same color for “Primary partition” or system partition. If so, you can proceed with this tool.
But if you find that C drive partition is a different color than the other drives’ partition size, you may need 3rd party software to extend the target partition size. This is because the C drive is a primary partition while the other drives are logical or extended hard disk partition, and you can’t feed the shrunk volume of other drives’ unallocated partition to your C drive. Resize partition like this:
Shrinking Drive Space to Increase C Drive Space Windows 10
Can’t extend c drive partition size? Shrinking drive space is a common thing here. You can say shrink d drive to extend c in this case. Choose one particular drive with enough free space, that you want to shrink. Then right-click on it and select “Shrink volume”. A dialog box appears, where you can type in the amount of shrink space in MB. Note that you can only shrink the available free space, not more.
After that, choose Shrink. The selected drive will lose the amount of space specified. You will find a new segment named “Free” or “Unallocated” with the shrunk space.
Converting the Unallocated Space to Free Space
If you find the “Free space” segment, you can skip this. But if you find “Unallocated”, you have to convert it into “Free space”. To do that, create a new volume with it by right-clicking “Unallocated” and choosing “New simple volume”. A dialog box appears. Select “OK” in each step and you’ll create a new drive.
Then you’ll need to delete that drive by right-clicking and selecting “Delete volume”. You’ll find that the volume is deleted, leaving the empty space as “Free space”.
How to Extend Drive C in Windows 10
At this stage, you can easily extend your C drive or any other drive by right-clicking and selecting “Extend Volume”. In the dialog box, the amount of extendable volume will be given by default, but you can choose to lower it too. After that, just select “OK” in all steps and your C drive space will be extended.
Extend C Drive Using Command Prompt
Another method of expanding, shrinking, or altering drive partitions is using the “Diskpart” command in the command prompt. Launch the command prompt (running as administrator not needed) and type in “diskpart”. A confirmation box appears, click on “Yes” and another command box named “C:\Windows\system32\diskpart.exe” appears. You can also simply search for “diskpart” in the search bar.
Inside the new command box, you have to choose your disk. In general, the hard drive is named as Disk 0. Type in “select disk 0” and press enter. The hard disk will be selected.
Now to show all the partitions enlisted, type “list partition” and hit enter. Now you can see all your drive partitions with sizes. To determine which is which, match the size of partitions with the sizes in your File Explorer. For example, Partition 2 is the C drive here.
Now let’s assume we’ll shrink 2 GB disk space from the D: drive which is Partition 3 here. To do that, type “select partition 3” to select D drive. The “Shrink” command works in “SHRINK DESIRED=x MINIMUM=y” format, where “x” is the desired amount of shrink space in MB, and “y” is the minimum amount of shrink space in MB. If your drive has enough space, it will shrink “x” amount of space in MB, but if you input a higher value of space than your free space, you’ll shrink “y” MB.
To shrink 2 GB or 2048 MB space, we can type “SHRINK DESIRED=2048 MINIMUM=1024”. It doesn’t matter how much input we give in MINIMUM as long as it’s less than DESIRED. After inputting, hit enter and we’ll get 2GB of disk space shrunk from the D drive.
Now to extend C drive or Partition 2, type “select partition 2”, hit enter, and simply type “extend size=2048” and press enter. The C drive will be extended to 2GB space. You can input any amount of free space to extend into C drive or any other drives in this process. Type in “exit” to exit the “diskpart” command box.
Using 3rd Party Applications to Resize C Partition Windows 10
On the journey on how to extend C drive in Windows 10, if you can’t extend using the previous methods, it’s because your C drive is in a different format than the other drives, and to extend it without losing data or Windows setup, you may need to use 3rd party applications like EaseUS Partition Manager, MiniTool Partition Wizard, AOMEI Partition Assistant and many more. They use the recovery partition and for the disk cleanup process, the extended partition is processed based on the drive letter.
For example, unlike AOMEI partition assistant, you can use the EaseUS Partition Master to directly drag and resize any drive spaces and extend your C drive. You may need to restart your computer in some cases but your files will be intact. You can also convert any drive to Primary or Logical drives, change drive letters in this software. Using AOMEI partition assistant, you can do the same. So, how to increase the space of c drive in windows 10? We hope we were able to solve the problem.
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Conclusion
In this article, we’ve shown some easy steps on how to extend C drive in Windows 10 using CMD, disk management tool, or other apps without formatting or losing any data. Extend drive c windows 10 can be essential as more free space in C drive improves computer performance. We hope that now you know how to extend c drive in windows 10 with unallocated space and also know how to extend c drive in windows 10 without formatting the disk drive.
