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I did some partitioning of my file disk (E:\) which I didn't like, so I removed the partitions I made and resized the original partition back to the full disk space. I kept a small bit of unallocated space which I couldn't add to the partition, I don't know why.

Now I'd like to add that bit of unallocated space to the actual partition using EaseUS Partition Manager (the program I used to remove the earlier partitions about a year back), but it doesn't want to add the remaining 7.8MB to the partition.

How do I fix this?

EaseUS Partition Manager // Resize/Move partition

I cannot seem to remove the number 7,8 nor drag the allocated partition (E:) to the beginning of the file. I already tried making the unallocated space bigger by shrinking the partition, but once I added it back to the partition, the 7,8MB remained unallocated.

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  • Have you tried doing this outside of Windows with your partition tool's boot disk? It's possible, for whatever reason, that this partition is locked while Windows is running.
    – user201262
    Sep 8, 2013 at 2:25
  • @Ramhound As far as I'm aware, all my disks are MBR (I've got 3 in my system) and even my external USB3 drive. Other disks don't have this problem.
    – Jochem Kuijpers
    Sep 8, 2013 at 9:29
  • @moses EaseUS Partition Manager does a reboot and runs it's tasks before booting into Windows, requiring a reboot first. So I think that is 'outside of Windows' right?
    – Jochem Kuijpers
    Sep 8, 2013 at 9:30
  • Related: Why is there free space at the end of NTFS Partitioned Drives?
    – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007
    Dec 23, 2016 at 14:30

2 Answers 2

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Don't worry about it.

The unallocated space appears before the partition. This means that adding that space to the partition will require moving the start of the partition, which in turn means that it will have to move a lot of the partition's data structures. This type of operation is time-consuming and risky -- a power failure, system crash, cat stepping on the keyboard, etc., can all interrupt the process and cause catastrophic data loss. The amount of unallocated space in question is 0.00082% of your total disk space; or put another way, it's about 5.4 3.5-inch floppy disks' worth of capacity. In other words, it's trivial. I understand that this sort of thing seems non-optimal and can bring out even normal peoples' obsessive-compulsive sides, but it's best to not take the risk. Granted, the risk is small, but the hassle on those rare occasions when a problem occurs is huge, so it's not worth taking that small risk. (Even if you've got good backups, do you really want to spend the time restoring your backup?)

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    Yeah, I figured it was too small to worry about, but still I'd like to know why this is happening :)
    – Jochem Kuijpers
    Sep 8, 2013 at 9:31
  • The E:\ drive apparently was 'logical' instead of 'primary'. Allocating the 7.8MB made it a 'primary' partition. After converting the E:\ drive to 'primary' I was able to merge the two partitions and thus solve my problem. I marked this as answer because of your effort.
    – Jochem Kuijpers
    Sep 8, 2013 at 12:19
  • "In other words, it's trivial. I understand that this sort of thing seems non-optimal and can bring out even normal peoples' obsessive-compulsive sides" - glad I'm not the only one.
    – Joe
    Oct 20, 2019 at 21:17
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The space is there for compatibilty and alignment.

Hard drives have a very convulted history and the operating systems dealing with them even more so. Chances are, that, if you were to use that space (and make no mistake, with the right operating system / filesystem combination, you can use every byte) - if the space is at the beginning of a physical drive, it is entirely possible that another operating system or BIOS might overwrite or corrupt data in that area and so render your partition corrupt.

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