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I have 4 hard drives in my computer, one windows drive C:, and other D,E,F, total capacity being 500 GB. I have windows 7 home basic installed on my system.

I want to re-install windows and increase my windows C: capacity from 74 GB to more, by combining my C: and D:.

I also do not want to lose my E: and F: contents. I don't care if D: contents are lost.

How can I accomplish this?

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    Just delete the partition then merge the free space with C. I would backup all data before you did this of course.
    – Ramhound
    Jul 17, 2013 at 16:24
  • Do you have 4 physical hard drives or 4 partitions on one hard drive?
    – ubiquibacon
    Jul 17, 2013 at 17:03
  • Agreed, this is confusing. Do you have 4 partitions on one drive, across multiple drives, or do you have 4 physical disks? Please clarify the scenario in your question.
    – Raystafarian
    Jul 17, 2013 at 17:11

2 Answers 2

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I understood that you have 4 partitions in one HD, with letters C:, D:, E: and F:, that's right?

If so, you can do the following:

  1. backup everything, because there's always the chance of something go wrong

  2. Open the Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Administrative Tools

  3. Open the Computer Management, and then select Disk Management.

  4. You'll see your Disk0 and all the drive letters associated to it.

  5. Look which partition/letter goes after the C:. That will be deleted afterwards. For example, let's assume it is the D:

  6. Open the Windows Explorer and move everything from the D: to another drive (to E: or F:)

  7. Close Windows Explorer and go back to the Computer Management

  8. Right-click the D:, and delete volume.

  9. Right-click the C:, and Extend Volume

And that's it, now your d: drive is gone and C: has increased. And if you're lucky, you haven't lost anything. Otherwise, use the backup from the first step and restore your files...

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  • If the user is looking to reinstall windows (upgrade) this can be done when the installation disc boots
    – Raystafarian
    Jul 17, 2013 at 17:13
  • @Raystafarian the deleting and expanding partitions can be done in the installer, but not the backup of the D:\ contents (step 6)
    – ernie
    Jul 17, 2013 at 17:14
  • @ernie you're right. I made an edit that changed the question. Rolled it back. Sorry
    – Raystafarian
    Jul 17, 2013 at 17:22
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The first thing you would need to do is back up all the data. Any way you're going to do it, you're going to end up wiping out all the drives. My recommendation would be to purchase an external hard drive that's at least 500GB in size and back up all important data to it.

After that is done, re-install Windows like you want. NOTE: You can't extend the C: drive onto other disks without a 3rd-party utility.

After Windows is done installing, follow these steps on the 2nd-4th drives: http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57378002-285/how-to-turn-old-hard-drives-into-one-large-drive-in-windows/

You'll end up with 2 drives, C: and D:. C: will have the same amount of space it has now, and D: will have the rest. Personally, I prefer to have the drives separated like this and keep all my data on D:, so I can reformat Windows without losing anything important at any time.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If ANY of the drives in the spanned volume fail, you lose all data on them. Proceed at your own risk.

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