A hard disk drive simply called as HDD, can be divided into smaller drives called as partitions. These computer partitions are very useful for Windows users, as they help them separate system files with application files and furthermore they are very useful while trying to run multiple operating systems on a computer.
But sometimes, there comes a need where you run out of space on one of your main partitions and you want to extend it. In such cases you can merge your partition with one of the other to extend its storage space. This can be done using two methods, go through this article and learn how:
1st Method: Merging two partition using inbuilt “Disk Management” tool
The Windows operating system provides an inbuilt utility called “Disk Management” to create, expand, merge, delete and compress a partition. The procedure to merge two hard disk partitions is as follows
Step 1: Go to Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools ->Computer Management (OR) simply right click on “My Computer” and select “Manage”
Step 2: Under “Computer Management”, choose “Storage” and then “Disk Management”
Step 3: The Disk Management console opens up displaying all the hard disk and the existing partition
Step 4: Choose the partition which you want to merge your partition with, right click on it and select “Delete Volume”, after which you’ll have an unallocated partition
Step 5: Right click on the main partition and then choose “Extend Volume”
That’s it! You have successfully merged your two Windows hard disk partition; however in case you choose a wrong partition to delete. All your data from that partition is lost then in such situation you can use Remo Recover Windows software to recover data from deleted partition.
Note:
- You could only merge an unallocated space into an existing partition
- You can merge maximum of two partitions at a time
- The partitions must be adjacent in order to merge them
- In Windows 7 OS, you cannot merge the “System Reserved” partition
2nd Method: Merging two partitions using Windows OS disc
- Insert your Windows OS CD / DVD into your optical drive and restart your computer
- Go to your BIOS settings and change the Boot sequence to CD / DVD drive first and Save the setting
- The system restarts and boots from your Windows CD, after which it displays welcome screen
- The welcome screen options differs based on the OS DVD you inserted, like it displays “To setup Windows XP, press ENTER” on Windows XP and “Install Now” button on Windows Vista, 7 and 8
- Click on “Enter” or “Install Now” button
- The next screen asks you to select the drive to install the operating system
- You can merge your partition in this screen, click on the partition which you want to expand and press “D” button to delete the partitions
- Now that partitions would be displayed as unallocated space
- You can then type your required free space to create one single partition
The only flaw in this method is that after OS installation all the data present from your hard drive is lost. So it is suggested to backup your entire computer data before using this method. On the other hand in the absence of backup, you can retrieve data after OS reinstallation using Remo Recover Windows Pro Edition software.
