Windows 10: how if at all can i merge partitions ..

this computer i just purchased was put together by previous owner with several partitions .. unfortunately the C: drive is very small and the E: drive is huge ... not sure if or how i can save programs and get them to work as the c: drive is pretty much full with the windows install and a few games loaded up on it.. Any suggestions?

:)

 

I need help please be fast

See how to do it in Easeus:

How to merge partitions with EaseUS Partition Master?

https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager-guide/...

 

Disk management can't merge two partition. (One of them was a linux based partition)

Hello guys!

I was dual booting windows 10 with Linux. Now I no more need the linux. So I formatted it in disk management but I can't merge my windows partition to the new unallocate partition. But with it I can create a new volume. So how can I format the new partition
so that it can merge/extend to the existing windows 10 one? Thanks in advance.

 

Hello LuckeyRon Welcome to the Ten Forums!

The first question before suggesting the likely end up with solution would be: "were all those programs custom installed to E by chance?" That seems to be one stubborn option many who build gaming cases tend to stick thinking that will somehow boost performance overall. The findings here after several years of customizing partitions on drives and tinkering with custom installs of OSs hasn't seen any substantial but too often seen cramped OS drives with very little wiggle room to work with!

Since this is being seen on a "Used" pc I could suggest the obvious backup of everything as far as files you want to keep, NUKE the drive clean, and then partition the drive the way you feel will best for your own needs! This of course would mean the need to reinstall all programs over. Or one option to keep E but make more room for C would involve using a 3rd party drive partitioning program to first shrink E down as far as reasonably possible while still leaving some room there and then expanding C to fill in the now vacant drive space!

Over the years while still being familiar with the free Easuus partitioning program I had generally opted to use the Open Source Gnome Partition Editor and simply boot live from at first cd and later on usb flash drives. That came with splitting drives on on occasions to dual boot a distro if not on VM or live disk even recovery sticks along with the version of Windows being run. The other guy's partitioning wear was found reliable for custom jobs like you have there.

 

Before you do anything, can you please post a picture of your complete Disk Management ?

 

To Extend a partition like your C: drive, there must be no other partition directly to the right of the C: drive. There can only be Unallocated Space. If E: is directly to the right of C: in Disk Management, then you can try Shrinking the E: Drive and then Extending the C: drive into the Unallocated Space. This usually doesn't work well. It's suggested to copy any files you want off of the E: drive to another drive and in Disk Management Right click it and Delete Volume leaving just the Unallocated Space to the right of C: Now right click the C: drive and choose to Extend Volume. into the Unallocated Space, any space left over you can Right click it and create a New Simple Volume and Format it NTFS and give it the drive letter E:

 

The main problem is that once the E is shrunk down you then have to move it along to the right if on the right of C in order to swap places with the now unallocated drive space. Moving partitions can be an all day task at times depending on size of drive, method used, what files are on each part, and is the drive fragmented to any extent.

Now here's another thing to note which could come up on you which would then force you to see the entire wiped clean! On an older 7 laptop the upgrade to 10 last summer ended badly with a goofed up 10 from a working 7! Then the upgrade was immediately followed by the 32bit clean install on the OEM primary to clean up the mess. But trying to shrink the C primary down not extend it in order to see a second smaller backup partition created was "Mission Impossible"! It was at that time I simply opted to replace the 32bit 10 with the 64bit with another clean install after nuking the OEM stuff completely! A nice new pair of C and E partitions came out with sturdy 64bit install going on the new C.

For simply cleaning off the drive while booting live from the 10 media if you have that made up you would open up the command prompt option and run the Diskpart tool with the correct hard drive selected before entering the "Clean" or far more destructive "Clean all" command and then simply see the new single C primary created and formatted with the Drive tools option found during the next clean install of 10. With a small drive that would tend to be the better move in order to avoid any out of drive space problems. The list of commands for the DiskPart tool are here:
Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your stick in List disk)
Clean
Create partition primary
Format fs=ntfs quick
Assign
Active
Exit

That is the order in which the individual commands would be entered for seeing the new single C primary created and formatted before even running the 10 installer for taking care of it all in one shot. The Drive tools simply provides the visual gui over the command prompt operation by text only method.

(Note the list in bold lettering was a copy and paste taken from Step 4 in a guide intended for seeing 10 run from a usb flash drive where the flash drive is first verified clean with the Clean command eliminating the factory Fat volume or other to insure working results. Windows 10 - Setup and Run on USB Flash Drive - Windows 10 Forums )

 

Is this being seen on a one or two drive system? Looks like a 120gb SSD with a 1tb secondary drive you would use for storage and backup while someone had used Disk 0 for custom installing the programs. You may want to consider replacement of the 120 with a larger drive even a 256gb if not 512gb or 1tb for the OS.

Here so far I have been skipping SSDs entirely to avoid the unnecessary expenses as well as being in favor of having larger 1tb OS drives(a lot more work space locally) and recently upgraded the pair of 1tb storage/backup drives to a pair of server class 2tb models. No Thank You on Cloud anything including the MS OneDrive.

 

I suspect your C: drive OS partition is on a 120 GB SSD. You can lose the advantage of speed on the SSD and put the OS on the 1 TB hard drive or replace the 120 GB SSD with something larger. I resisted getting SSDs for a while, but let me tell you, I purchased an Asus X750JA laptop with an i7 processor and it came with 2 x 1 TB hard drives. I replaced the primary 1 TB hard drive with a 500 GB SSD. I dual boot Windows 10 - one on the SSD and one on the HDD. The speed difference between the two is incredible!

 

Couldn't agree more on replacing the OS drive due to the small size drive's limitations. If you do decide to go that route or simply go for OSing the 1tb drive with a large single primary since that is already showing "new volume" you want to follow the Clean Install guide to the letter. Windows 10 - Clean Install - Windows 10 Forums

Pay particular attention to this part especially Step #2 to avoid some real headaches! Found that out fast here a year ago before reviewing the guide when first trying to upgrade over 7 and nothing would take!

There are also a few different options for seeing the media created as well as the size of the ISO image file downloaded as one may include both editions but in the 32bit or 64bit flavor while the general update will see both editions in both flavors. Windows 10 ISO Download - Windows 10 Forums