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Solve : Extend Volume Grayed out Windows 7 C:?

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Yesterday I was given a dead eMachine computer and the main board has a cold solder joint or something wrong with it along those lines. Very unstable and power supply good, ram checked out, and it has one of the worst motherboards in it from ECS. I decided to gut it and use the good parts and toss the board out after first pulling off all good parts = CPU, RAM, Jumpers.

Inside this eMachine was a 750GB SATA II 7200RPM HDD and so I used my drive duplicator to clone a 1 for 1 from my 160GB SATA II HDD to this 750GB SATA II HDD and figured I'd just resize it from WINDOWS 7 64-bit Home Premium once its booted and running Windows 7.

Well I hit a problem... problem is that the feature to extend the volume is grayed out. .... so some might ask why only limit yourself to a 40GB C: partition of a 160GB HDD with Windows 7... well the history of this system is that originally the build was on a 40GB SSD in this system. I pulled the 40GB SSD for use in newer system and drive duplicated the 40GB SSD to a 160GB HDD and this made a 40GB partition on the 160GB HDD for Windows 7 and left around 120GB unused. I CREATED a partition in the 120GB space for data and program installations. Now duplicating from that 160GB to 750GB drive I have the 40GB, 120GB, and a large unused space allocation on the drive.

What i want to do is size the C: from 40GB to 100GB which is more than plenty for Windows 7 to grow with MS Updates etc. Currently C: has 4 GB free and so its starting to get tight. Looking at the 120GB partition on the drive I could extend this to a larger size if wanted but i was actually going to leave this 120GB space alone, and after the C: was increased in size to 100GB create another partition to use the remaining space, then copy the data from the old 164.7GB SATA 1 HDD to this space and remove the 164.7GB HDD from daily use after about 10 years of use and in excess of 65000 run hours.

Is this resizing able to be done from within Windows 7 somehow or should I use a 3rd party tool... also if a 3rd party tool is best, what are your suggestions?

The good thing is that if I kill the data on the 750GB drive right now I am not in trouble as for the original 160GB drive is still in my drive duplicator so, I can experiment without risk of total data loss. But instead of just trying whatever tools that google suggests for this problem, i figured I'd check with you all here for your input on this.

At some point I suppose I should back up all the data to an external and perform a full clean rebuild of this system but its so highly configured and some software on it I'd be looking for a needle in a hay stack for installation discs that are likely still in boxes that I havent opened since moving to a new house a few months ago... and hopefully the boxes still exist since my wife stated the one day that if you dont need something after a certain period of time you just throw it away. I am not a pack rat, but I am also not wasteful and so i dont throw stuff away that hasnt been used for 90 days and then 6 months later buy another one of them because now I need it again ... sometimes she drives me crazy with her wasteful habits that burns money ... you guys cant help with that and thats sort of off subject anyways

Edit: After thinking about the 65,000+ run hours on the 164.7GB HDD that I would be removing from use I decided to check the run time on this 750GB HDD and its got some mileage on it. I guess I will be not wiping the 160GB HDD and will place it into storage in a ESD bag in case this 750GB dies from high mileage. This computer was used at a clients business running just about daily 24/7 for 4.28 years. I talked them into getting a better Core i3 HP for $399.99 as a REPLACEMENT with Windows 7.

[attachment deleted by admin to conserve space]You cannot extend a partition unless it would extend into empty space, so the first partition cannot be extended using Disk Management.

Other partition tools, like gparted from a Live CD, may work. The process involves moving the entire second partition, so data loss would be a consideration. Since it is a clone of another HDD that's less of an issue since you could TRY again from the same drive though.Quote

You cannot extend a partition unless it would extend into empty space, so the first partition cannot be extended using Disk Management.

So C: cant skip past G: to grab the unused space at the tail end of this 750GB I guess your saying, so I will have to move the data off of the G: 120GB partition elsewhere so that there is no other partitions on the drive so C: to be able to expand without conflict ... or use a 3rd party tool?Quote from: DaveLembke on February 24, 2015, 12:02:54 PM
So C: cant skip past G: to grab the unused space at the tail end of this 750GB I guess your saying, so I will have to move the data off of the G: 120GB partition elsewhere so that there is no other partitions on the drive so C: to be able to expand without conflict ... or use a 3rd party tool?

I think so, yes. Volume extending is limited in Disk Management and is a bit on the conservative side.Give Easus Partition MANAGER a try...there's a Free version.


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