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I deleted and formatted Dell's Recovery partition, and was hoping to add that 14GB of space to the C drive. No matter that I try, I just cannot get it to merge with drive C: I've tried using EaseUs Partition Manager and Windows 7's Disk Management itself. Any idea how this can be done? It's the Drive H I'm trying to add or merge to C.

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  • Did you get an error when attempting to merge them?
    – Steven
    Oct 13, 2015 at 20:00
  • No. I just cannot merge them. The Merge option does not appear at all.
    – Norman
    Oct 13, 2015 at 20:00
  • Or, Extend in Disk Management in Windows 7
    – Norman
    Oct 13, 2015 at 20:01
  • The main issue is because the c drive is a primary partition, and you're trying to merge into an extended partition Oct 14, 2015 at 3:57
  • @CanadianLuke So if I converted H to a Primary Partition, would I be able to merge it to C:
    – Norman
    Oct 14, 2015 at 4:02

1 Answer 1

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If you don't need any data on drive H:, delete the partition and then extend the C:\ partition using the newly created free space.

If you need the data, then back it up to another drive before deleting the partition.

Sometimes Windows won't let you easily extend volumes, and you need to use third-party software to do so. In my experience, the GParted boot disk has worked very well. It can take some time to complete, based on the size of the partitions, so make sure you take that into account. Also, you should always back up all of your data before making changes to your partitions, just in case something happens. I personally have never lost data using GParted, but you should always back up before making changes like this.

GParted Boot CD ISO Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable

How to use: http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html

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  • I deleted it, and the option to extend the C:\ partition is grayed out.
    – Norman
    Oct 13, 2015 at 20:07
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    You will need to use third-party partitioning software to extend this volume, most likely because the free space is "in front" of the partition, and not "behind" it. I don't think you will be able to do this while Windows is running, because it will need to "move" the data in the partition to use all the free space. I have had good results using the GParted boot disk, which will allow you to move and resize your partitions outside of Windows. I've updated the answer with links to the download and how-to page.
    – Matt
    Oct 13, 2015 at 20:24

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