Increasing disk capacity c by d. Increasing the size of drive C by using free space on drive D

Incorrect hard disk layout during installation operating system can cause the C drive to fill up quickly and slow down your computer's performance. This problem solved by increasing the C Windows section. This does not require special knowledge. You can add memory to the C drive using special programs with a user-friendly graphical interface.

Acronis Disk Manager

Acronis Disk Director is considered to be the unsurpassed leader in disk management utilities. It allows you to split and move partitions, as well as perform many other operations on them. Acronis Disk Director can be downloaded from the manufacturer's website (for a fee) or (for free).

Training

The increase in the system partition (usually C) is carried out by reducing the neighboring partition (usually D) with the addition of the freed volume to the C drive. Therefore, before starting work on the partition, it is necessary to free up the volume necessary for attaching on the donor disk (preferably with a margin).

Implementation

To increase disk C at the expense of a neighboring disk (usually D), you must:

1. run the utility as an administrator;
2. click once on the adjacent disk (D);
3. in the window that opens, enter in the "Unallocated space in front of the volume" field the amount of free memory that you want to transfer to disk C (in bytes);
4. press the "OK" button;
5. click once on the system drive (C);
6. click on the "Operations" panel (on the left) on the line "Resize volume";
7. in the window that opens, click on the arrow next to the "Volume Size" field (attaches all unallocated space after the partition);
8. press the "OK" button;
9. click on the "Apply Scheduled Operations (2)" button ( top panel programs).

The speed of the operation depends on the capacity of a particular computer, the amount of disk space used, and the amount of free space planned for moving. For successful repartitioning, it is recommended to disable all unused programs and not use the computer until the work is completed.

Additional information on the use of disks can be obtained in our article.

How to enlarge disk D? I have on my computer system disk(C :) is very large, and (D :) for storing files, it turned out to be very small, it’s so inconvenient to work, in Disk Management I compress a large system partition (C :) and try to attach unallocated space to the disk (D :), but the button Extend volume is not active because there is a partition (C:) between (D:) and unallocated space. Acronis was advised on the forum, but I don’t know how to work with it, they say if the program is used incorrectly, it is very easy to lose data. Do you have on this topic some good articles, but unfortunately there is no answer to my problem in them. Victor.

How to enlarge disk D?

Note: Hello friends, this article was written 5 years ago and now a lot has changed, in particular, a very good free program has appeared. AOMEI Partition Assistant and she can too enlarge disk (D:), here.

Victor sent us a screenshot, but the quality leaves much to be desired, so I simulated his problem on my computer, it comes across quite often. There are many reasons for it, often due to errors in file system Windows 7 or because, well, it doesn’t matter, you can actually solve it with the Acronis Disk Director program or for lovers of free software, we have instructions for working with a free program. When working with a laptop and netbook, be careful, first copy important data to portable media. If Acronis warns you that unsupported disks are found, then you need to use a newer version of the program, do not continue under any circumstances. We look friends at the screenshot and see the disk (C:) with a volume of 367 GB, as well as disk (D:) with a capacity of 96.7 GB, of course, it’s not very convenient to work like that, all personal data, no doubt you have a lot of them, always store it on disk (D :).

Next, we look at how the situation will look like after compressing the partition (C:). Start->Computer, click on it right click mouse and open Manage, then Controldiscs, right-click on the drive (C:) and select from the drop-down menu Shrink volume.

We choose for example 187 GB.

You see, unallocated space is formed, which will simply not work to attach to our disk (D :), the button extendedread volume inactive, so how to increase disk (D:)?

We act like this, the first thing we will do is prepare our program, we will work using the Acronis boot module, how to make it or a USB flash drive with the module, read here. How to change priority. If you want to work with the program directly by installing it on your computer, please, you can also use my instructions and increaseDisk (D:), although of course the possibilities boot disk more.
We insert the disk with the program into the drive and reboot.

The main window of the program. Pay attention to our leftmost disk (D:) with a volume 96,7 GB and we need to increase it due to the unallocated space we created.

You may ask why disk (D:) marked as primary, because Windows 7 is installed on another disk, with a volume of 184.3 GB. This is because I also have two operating systems, Windows XP is on (D :), I installed it first, and Windows 7 was installed later on the disk (C :), you can ignore this.
Select with mouse disk (D:), with a capacity of 96.7 GB and immediately a lot of tools appear on the left side of the window.

Click on the button Change timesmeasures.

The following program dialog box appears. In it, many do not know what to do and get lost, but you need to check the box Add unallocated space to that.

So, there is almost no free space left on the C drive, and the question arose of how to increase the amount of free space on the C drive. Below are recommendations for increasing the free memory of the C drive.

1. Don't store a lot of data on your desktop

You should not store a large amount of data on the desktop, as the folder that stores the content desktop, is located on drive C. Therefore, the more data is on the desktop (movies, photos, music), the less free space remains on drive C. It is best to store movies, photos, music and other large files on the D drive. If you only have drive C, you should split the drive into two partitions C and D and transfer large files to drive D

2. Clean C drive from temporary and junk files

In folders with temporary files, sometimes several tens of gigabytes of garbage accumulate. Therefore, it is necessary to clean the disk from debris. How to do this in the article How to properly clean the hard drive from debris.

3. Extend drive C with logical drive D

If HDD is divided into 2 partitions, then you can increase the size of drive C by reducing drive D. All data will remain safe and sound. You don't have to worry about this. But this process can take a decent amount of time - up to several hours, depending on the size of the hard disk and the free space on it.

To do this, you need the Acronis Disk Director program. You can download the boot disk image. You can burn a disc using the free disc burning software DeepBurner 1.9

Boot your computer from the Acronis boot disk. Select from the menu Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced.

In the boot agent window, select Launch management console.

Now, first you need to reduce the size of the D drive to make room for the increase in the local drive C. To do this, right-click on the graphic image of the D drive and select the item in the context menu Resize volume.

Move the mouse pointer over the left edge of disk D so that the pointer changes to double-headed arrows, and while holding down the left mouse button, drag the pointer to the right. Thus, you will reduce the size of the D drive and free up space in front of it, which can then be attached to the C drive.

In field Unallocated space in front of the volume you can manually set the size by which you want to reduce the D drive and increase the C drive. A volume can only be reduced to a size that does not exceed the amount of free space on this volume. Then click OK.

Right click on drive C and select Resize volume.

Now take the right edge of drive C and drag it all the way to the right, thereby increasing drive C by the amount of unallocated space on your hard drive. Click OK.

It remains to complete the planned changes on the hard drive. To do this, click the button Apply Scheduled Operations.

A window will appear listing all the operations that will be performed. Click the button Continue.

The process of resizing drives C and D will begin. This may take quite a while, so please be patient. When the process of increasing the volume of disk C is completed, click the button close. Now you can run the program and restart your computer. Drive C is enlarged by drive D.

4. Install a larger hard drive and clone partitions

Most users are accustomed to using two partitions on one hard drive, usually a drive called C and D. Many have become interested in the question of how to change the disk size in Windows 10 using the built-in system tools (with Windows installation or after) and third-party freeware.

Use the Disk Management utility

• Open the utility by right-clicking on the "Start" menu, select "Disk Management".

• In the Start menu search bar, type "Control Panel" and open it.

Select "System and Security".
In the window that opens, in the "Administration" item, click on the "Create and format" sub-item hard drive».

Shrink volume, free up space to create a new partition in Windows 10

In order to create a new volume in the utility, you first need to take free space somewhere for this, you can get it by compressing space on an existing volume. In the Windows operating system, no more than 4 partitions can exist on one physical HDD, including system partitions (for example, the Recovery Partition). Usually there are two local drives C and D.

To create a third volume, you need to right-click on a partition with more free space, in our case it is drive D. An explorer window will appear, click on the “Compress volume” item to free up free space, change it to unallocated.

Section D to create a new volume.

After that, the message “The volume is being polled to determine the available space for compression. Wait…". The process can last from a few seconds to several tens of minutes.
When the system finishes polling the volume, a window will appear, in the "Size of the volume to be compressed" column, you need to specify how much space must be separated from the donor disk to create free space for now. It will not work to allocate more space for the new partition than specified. In the example in the screenshot, the limit is 78880 MB, a little more than 77 GB.

You can specify any other number less than the above, for example, setting the value to 51200 MB will allocate exactly 50 gigabytes for the new volume. After selecting the “Compress” item, no result will be noticeable for some time. To check if the compression process is in progress, you need to hover over the utility window, a spinning blue circle should appear. When a black bar with unallocated space appears at the bottom of the window, this will indicate that compression has occurred.

This freed up space to create a new volume on the HDD in Windows 10. Now the unallocated space must be turned into a full-fledged hard disk partition.

- Create a hard disk partition from unallocated space

You must right-click on the area labeled "Unallocated", select "Create a simple volume".

The Create Wizard will open. simple volume”, click “Next”, in the next window you will need to specify the size of the new volume. You can leave the value unchanged or, if you want to create two partitions or more, specify a value less. Click "Next".

After that, select the Latin letter that will denote the disk, for example, F. Select the letter, click "Next".

You will then be able to format the new partition if necessary.

Continue by clicking "Finish".

After a few seconds or minutes, the partition is formatted and the new hard disk partition Windows disk 10 will be created. When choosing the amount of memory that you want to allocate for the formation of a new one, you must take into account that a small amount of compressed space will be taken by Windows for system needs.
So when choosing 50 GB of memory, we got a volume of 49.9 GB.

Create Partitions When Installing Windows 10

When installing Windows 10 on a computer from a USB flash drive or disk, you can divide disks into volumes. For those who reinstall the operating system, be aware that this will delete data from the system partition.
During Windows installation, after entering (or skipping entering) the activation key, select the "Custom installation" item, after which it will be possible to select a partition for installation, tools for configuring partitions are available.

In our case, drive C is partition 4.
To make two partitions from one HDD, you need to use the "Delete" partition button, as a result it will be converted to "Unallocated disk space" (point 4).
Then select an unallocated space, click the "Create" button, set the size of the future "Disk C". After its creation, free unallocated space will remain, which will need to be converted into the second disk partition in the same way.

After creating the second partition, it is recommended to select it, click "Format" (in otherwise it may not appear in File Explorer after installing Windows 10 and will have to be formatted and assigned a letter through Disk Management). Then select the volume that was created first, click the "Next" button to continue installing the operating system on drive C.

Programs for partitioning disks into partitions

In addition to built-in Windows tools, there are many programs for working with partitions on disks. Some of the best free programs are Aomei Partition Assistant Free and Minitool Partition Wizard Free.
First you need to download the Aomei Partition Assistant program from the official website, install it on your PC and run it. The application has a Russian language, we select a non-system drive, in our case it is "E".
Right-click on it, click "Resize Partition".

The selected amount of memory will appear, in our case - 15 GB.
Right-click on the system local drive C, from context menu select "Resize Partition".

Again, drag the slider to the right to the desired size, or set the desired space for expansion in the "Unallocated space after" field. You will be prompted to make a recovery image. Windows systems 10 or backup third party means, press "OK". To save the changes, click "Apply" in the upper left corner.

A message will appear that there will be several reboots, during which drive C will merge with unallocated space, select "Go". A message will appear that the program will work in PreOs mode, click "Yes".
Will begin restart Windows 10.
The first boot will launch AOMEI Partition Assistant PreOS Mode.
The task execution process will start.

You can move space from drive E (or any other drive) to drive C using Disk Management. Please note that you cannot take space from another physical disk, you can only take space from one physical disk, which is divided into several.

The first way is to expand the disk by removing another disk.

ATTENTION! Before doing this, copy all the data from the disk from which you will take the place. Since, in order to expand the disk, we need to delete files from it.

Here I have 1 physical disk of 25 GB, but it is divided into 2 disks:

Drive C ( local disk) - 18.2 GB.
- Disk E (New Volume) - 6.64 GB.

Right click on Computer(not on the label, which has an arrow at the bottom left) and click on Manage.

Computer Management opens, select here in the Storage devices tab - Disk Management.

Here we see all the disks that we have on the computer. Right click on the disk from which we want to take a place (I have this drive E) and select Delete volume.

We are warned that deleting a volume destroys all data on that volume. Archive any data you wish to keep before deleting. Do you want to continue? We press Yes.

Now we have one C drive. And then there is 6.65 GB. unallocated space.

Now right click on drive C or on that disk a place (6.65 GB.) to which we want to add and select Extend Volume.

The Extend Volume Wizard opens, click Next.

We select the space (place) how much we want to take (in the screenshot, I took all 6.65 GB or 6807 MB.) and click next. It is not necessary to select the entire space, you can select half, for example, or as much as you want to increase your disk at the expense of space from another disk. Just then it will be necessary to create a simple volume so that there is no unallocated space left.

Click Finish to close the Extend Volume Wizard.

That's all. Now we have 1 disk of 25 GB.

The second way to expand the disk without losing data. Using the free program Minitool Partition Wizard.

Download Minitool Partition Wizard from the official website partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Here I have 1 physical disk of 50 GB. divided by 3:

Drive C (Windows 8) 25 GB.
- Disk Q (Multimedia) 9.76 GB.
- Disk T (Programs) 19.5 GB.

The program menu opens, select the left option to launch the Partition Wizard.

Here is a menu that displays all of our drives and their size.

Right click on drive C and choose Extend(Expand) to expand the C drive.

Now we select the drive from which we will take space for our C drive. I will choose the Q (Multimedia) drive.

Use the slider to select the size which we will take from disk Q (Multimedia). I chose 5.02 GB. AND click OK.

Now, on the upper left in the program, click Apply to apply the changes and transfer the space to 5.02 GB. from drive Q (Multimedia) to drive C (Windows 8).